Linux

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

That will depend on the games you play, and what platform you use. If you are using Steam, you can enable the proton layer have more access to games, but if the game in question uses any type of kernel level anti cheat chances are it's not going to work.

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

Depends on what you are used to, if you are using mod managers and which ones.

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

A lot of work has been done with WINE, games on Linux, and Proton. You'll need to do a little bit of reading to see if it can work on Linux, but the community can often be awesome and already have found a solution. There are also a lot of great alternatives to Windows/Mac only software you can try.

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

Depends on your distro but most can install .net, you'll need to do a bit of reading.

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

Yes, there are package managers that you can use to install and update software, some distro's even have a shop like interface.

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?

I've only ever had to use a virus scanner twice in my Linux journey and both of those times it was on a server. Because Linux is open source everybody can see what is going on in the code and this way bugs or security issues can be found and patched quicker.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Depends, if you are using AMD you should be fine, Nvidia has functioning drivers as well, I can't speak for Intel ARC support because I've never used it..

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

I've never broken my hardware, but I've broken my system a few times by ignoring the warnings the system gave me, always got it to work again.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Linux Mint might be a good one, the Cinnamon is great for beginners, but there are many flavors you can choose from. Start with a live system which will not require you to install anything just yet, but you'll get a feeling for how everything works. After trying it out live you can decide if you would like to install it. But remember that when trying it live you are limited in what you can do.

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

Isn't .NET open source and cross platform now? Isn't there an official Linux runtime? Or is it just the most basic subset of .NET without any of the GUI libraries or other things Windows .NET apps routinely depend on?

Just as a note, NVIDIA on Linux is not bad, BUT IS REALLY ANNOYING because you will get some random bugs that are only exclusive to NVIDIA cards. Like this one: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/non-existent-shared-vram-on-nvidia-linux-drivers/260304

If you have a low VRAM NVIDIA GPU and you want to play a modern game, you will have a bad time. (However, AMD and Intel should work just fine lolol)

just get an extra ssd, install mint or pop (or both on separate partitions) and try

there is a learning curve, and there's always new stuff, more depth, but imo the above two are fairly easy to understand. pop is more osx-like both in looks but also, it's somewhat locked down, which can feel limiting but it keeps things simple. i've been using it in the last few years daily. i was using mint before that, i started daily driving linux with it, but i managed to mess it up enough that every game was struggling to run lol, but i played hl:alyx on there without an issue for example

nvidia doesn't make the best linux drivers, but some think they are completely unusable but actually it just means that there are some games that are glitchy or slow, for instance forza horizon runs better on my steam deck than my rtx 2080. although recently it went from 20-30 fps to 30-40, so it will get better at some point
edit: actually, the above was last week, there were some updates and it's a sputtery 60 fps now

next build will have an amd card for sure, but nvidia is mostly usable too. the "anti-cheat" blockade is more frustrating imo

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

It depends a lot on the game, but in my experience not always. Running games straight from steam works really well with a small number of exceptions, but a lot of the sometimes weird tools for patching exe:s and so on that some games use can sometimes be a pain to get running. Not necessarily impossible but yeah this is a reason for why I still keep around my windows installation for dual booting.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

• For gaming and if you just want things to work without being bothered, Nobara. It's a Fedora base, which is good for gaming because you will have updates more quickly than other distros, but not so quick that you will get bad updates breaking stuff. It's Fedora but heavily modified for gaming, and has a lot of stuff already set up that you would need to do manually to improve gaming on another distro. It uses KDE as a Desktop Environment which is pretty good and similar-looking to Windows (a task bar on the bottom, a start menu, a system tray, etc) and you can customize it extensively.

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? Antiwhat ? Just kidding.

• You're not installing softwares by running executables found on random websites, so you at least have less chances of accidentally installing malware that way (not saying that happened to me a lot on Windows... but not saying that it didn't 😅 ).
• The best known antivirus on linux is clamAV, but it's command line only. It's not very complicated to use, but if you want a graphical interface there are several applications that are clamAV frontends (clamAV still does the actual scanning and such, but the application gives you a graphical interface to interact with it)

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

• For Steam games, the Steam app has Proton, which enables you to play Windows games on Linux, and most will work just fine. There will always be a few games that require tinkering, or that won't work at all, but not many. You can check ProtonDB to see if your games run well with Proton (https://www.protondb.com/ ) and if a game won't run, you can check it to see if people have posted solutions (sometimes it's as easy as copy-pasting a command into the game's launch options, and poof, there goes the DirectX error !
• For GoG games, and also games from other stores (EA, Epic, etc) you can install Lutris which will use Wine to make your non-Linux games work on linux. As will Proton, there will be a few games that won't cooperate. All in all, I'd say less than 5% of my games don't work or require tinkering, and I have a lot of them.
• If you play multiplayer online games that use kernel-level anticheats, you might be fucked (though I'd argue that it's a good thing, because the game not working is much preferable to the security risk posed by kernel-level anticheats...). Some games are still playable without the anti-cheat activated, you just can't join competitive servers without the anticheat, while other games won't work at all.

In terms of games and programs, it's best to look for/ask about the specific ones. Things have improved a ton with Steam/Proton, but just make sure there isn't a deal breaker in there somewhere. Otherwise, there's great distros out there that are EZPZ for normal everyday computer tasks (web surfing, file browsing, office shit).

Note here, a lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

Lots of good answers to your other Qs here so I'm gonna focus on your last one. If you lack in-depth computer skills as much as I'm imagining, than I think the best distro for you would be Bazzite.

Firstly, I'm going to call out the users here suggesting Mint. Mint is only a good beginner distro for people that are already "early adopters" or tech-savvy to switch to Linux for the first time. When I first switched from Windows 10 on my desktop last year, I tried Mint. Keep in mind, I have extensive knowledge of the commandline and headless Debian from several years of running a homelab. I found it completely intolerable how much wasn't intuitive, how difficult cinnamon was, how much set up was involved in getting graphics drivers working, and gaming going. It wasn't that I'm incapable, it's that I don't want my gaming desktop to require that much tinkering just to play games. Let alone that I can't imagine how steep that learning curve would be for a casual gamer with minimal tech skills.

That brings me to Bazzite. I switched back fully to Windows 10 for several months because of how disillusioned I was before learning about it. Bazzite is one of a handful of distros that have taken the SteamOS experience from the Steam Deck and tried to build on/improve it. It uses the KDE desktop environment, which is super similar to Windows 10 in look and feel. It includes everything you need for gaming right out of the box, including graphics drivers already installed, Steam as well, all of the frameworks and compatibility tools you need already configured. It's immutable too, which means the system directories are locked down so you can't accidentally break things. There's a unified system updater that cover everything. The system, your applications, compatibility tools, all of it updated with just one click.

As well, games just work without needing special configuration. It's truly the easiest to use distro for people switching from Win10 that just want to play games with their computer, maybe some internet browsing and email alongside that. You also don't have to worry about stupid codec issues if you wanna watch youtube or streaming sites in the browser.

Seriously people, stop recommending Mint. All the folks who would be okay with the amount of tinkering it requires have already made the switch. If we want the less tech-savy gaming folks to be able to make the switch, we need to be recommending something that will just work out of the gates for them. Pushing them to distro-hop is just going to push them to Win11. Plus, the more that make that leap, the more likely game devs will have to target WINE, the less games will be borked. It's already pretty minimal though, especially if it doesn't use anti-cheat.

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

For the most part, yes. I've modded Skyrim, with SKSE and haven't run into any mods I couldn't add. Satisfactory has linux support for mods through the community-built mod launcher, so I haven't had any problems there. If you are comfortable copying files around, sometimes editing text files, uncompressing files, and other like tasks then you'll be fine. The only troubles I have had are running trainers that run alongside the game and connect to the running executable. There is one of the Resident Evil 2 remake I wasn't able to get going. I think there are methods to do this, I just haven't looked into them in detail yet.

For most things involving games in Linux, you need to have a small amount of tweaking skills, and that's it. You might have to copy a launch string into the Steam launch setup, or you might need to download a tweaked copy of Proton to get something running well (Glorious Eggroll builds). If you have those skills or can learn them, you'll be fine. It's kind of fun, too. If you don't have those skills or want to learn them, you'll be restricted to not being able to get the best experience when running some games and there will be the occasional game in your backlog that won't run at all without it.

Not trying to scare anyone off, but that's been my experience with Linux gaming. I'm comfortable enough on Linux that it hasn't been a problem, but some people might find it more of a hurdle to get over.

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

A lot of stuff runs with windows emulation as if it's native. It's the same method the steam deck uses and so Valve actively do work to keep it working. The main problem is games with heavy anti-cheat.

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

Generally, yes. I think so.

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

See above.

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

There's .NET libraries for Linux, but things have to be recompiled to use them.

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

The distribution maintainer will issue updates on a regular basis. Update procedure is different for different distros, but all have a push-button update scheme. It's pretty solid these days.

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?

Keep your system up to date with security updates, and you'll tend to be fine. Smaller user base tends to mean that there's far less malware. Antivirus isn't necessary.

Obviously phishing scams don't care what OS you're on, so mind what you click.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

AMD ones are very solid.

Nvidia ones can be a pain from what I hear, but I don't buy green.

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

No.

That said... You can always wipe a disk when you install an OS.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Download a few Live-USB images and try them out. You don't need to install them to get a desktop and a browser up. You can see if there's any compatibility issues with your hardware.

Whichever works for you, go with it.

My whole life with computers the fanbois du jour told me we had reached excellent usability. We’re talking GEOS, FVWM, the shit Sun and Digital Equipment Corp threw at us, up until Windows 10 and KDE or what have you: there will always come a point when you need or want to have a look under the hood. And there things can be alien, overly complex and very inconsistent and undocumented. That is the path every real user will walk one day, and it’s not pretty. Best of luck on your journeys!

Honestly it is going to take you longer to read all answers here than try yourself!

Get an extra HD, even a slow external one if you must, put Linux on it, install Steam and some games, try, decide for yourself.

Overall yes you can work and play on Linux comfortably, I've been doing it for year. No you don't need to be an expert to use Linux BUT it can be an amazing empowering moment to actually learn how a computer work BECAUSE you are free to do whatever you want with it. Just back up your data first THEN go nuts. Break stuff and learn, it's even more fun than gaming.