Basically the forced shift to the enshittified Windows 11 in october has me eyeing the fence a lot. But all I know about Linux is 1: it’s a cantankerous beast that can smell your fear and lack of computer skills and 2: that’s apparently not true any more? Making the change has slowly become a more real possibility for me, though I’m pretty much a fairly casual PC-user, I don’t do much more than play games. So I wrote down some questions I had about Linux.

Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?

Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?

If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?

How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?

How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?

And also, what distro might be best for me?

      • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        I thought you were referring to having to install ancient drivers that are no longer properly supported, that is still a problem on x.org, but if we use nouveau, the problems go away for the most part.

        it appears the only real issue with nvidia drivers from back then on wayland is accelerated xwayland according to the arch wiki. I don’t think we shouldn’t be recommending wayland because over 10 year old gpus have a relatively minor issue but still work.

        Sure, if you have ancient hardware, I actually recommend XFCE, but outside of this one niche case, it’s not wise to be recommending it.

        Once steam and proton/wine get rid of xwayland… there won’t be many xwayland apps that are used on a daily basis, however, when that happens, I don’t think this will still stand.

          • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
            1·
            7 hours ago

            And it still is. Being expected to use slightly different software when you’re using a 10+ year old hardware setup is not weird. Furthermore, this is an issue with the nvidia driver support, which is proprietary, the open source drivers have no such problems. And again, this will be nearly completely solved once steam/proton stop needing xwayland.

            • Fatur_New@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              7 hours ago

              Being expected to use slightly different software when you’re using a 10+ year old hardware setup is not weird

              Yes, it isn’t weird. The problem is you want people to leave Xorg meanwhile NVK hasn’t finished yet

              • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
                1·
                6 hours ago

                …the vast majority of beginners do not have 10+ year old hardware.

                I want everyone except those who use 10+ year old hardware to move, and in fact, that’s exactly what i’ve recommended in the past.

                here I am making that exact recommendation:

                https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/53716147/18224187

                We shouldn’t be recommending things for a tiny niche, we should be recommending what’s best on average, and as we learn about the specific needs of a user, then recommend things specifically for that user.

                • Fatur_New@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  6 hours ago

                  the vast majority of beginners do not have 10+ year old hardware.

                  In western countries

                  • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
                    1·
                    6 hours ago

                    …you mean western countries where nvidia gpu’s are the most common?

                    If we’re including beginners in developing countries this is even less common of an issue, when I was in india, not a single person I helped with tech had a graphics card, why would they have a 470xx series driver gpu and not an integrated system? It’s not even the cheapest choice. I recently built a PC in india, coincidentally, and we ended up going with an integrated system for a gaming PC.

                    https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

                    i mean, look at these stats, it’s such a minority it’s hardly worth mention. You’ll probably say “these are just the steam stats, most of them aren’t on steam anyway!” But if they’re not using steam/proton… they almost definitely aren’t using xwayland anyway so the issues don’t apply to them in the first place.

                    https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5204/~/list-of-kepler-series-geforce-desktop-gpus

                    compare that to the list on the hardware survey and you’ll see how unbelievably rare this problem actually is. They don’t even make the list, it’s less than a 1% issue.