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?
I’m a newcomer to Linux (only about a year in), but here’s what I’ve got so far:
Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?
Mine wasn’t at all. Valve has done a lot of work to make this seamless so that more games can be played on the Steam Deck. Check the Proton DB to see what your games look like.
Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?
I have very little experience with this, but probably. Linux users tend to be tinkerers.
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?
Same answer for both: There’s Wine, and a whole bunch of setup scripts that can get even stuff like Adobe Creative Suite working with it. Worst case scenario, there’s VirtualBox for the one or two apps you might need to run Windows for. But I find that the open source options, while they might have a learning curve, tend to be substantially better than either of those options.
How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?
More or less, but you can pick and choose what updates you want to install and when. Most distros have a package manager that’ll let you update the kernel, the drivers, the middleware, the desktop environment, all your apps, and even the package manager itself on your schedule, from one interface. You can also just ignore it and never update anything, though I wouldn’t recommend that.
How does digital security work on Linux?
Very well. It’s much more locked-down by default, for one thing.
Is it more vulnerable due to being open source?
Quite the opposite. Open source projects are well known for being less vulnerable out of the box; Linux in particular is used by huge companies as a lightweight server OS, so it has a lot of highly-paid people committing security fixes back down to the open source project.
Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?
Antivirus is a bandaid on Windows, provided because the OS was written with certain naive assumptions that let attackers get access they shouldn’t have. On Linux, those assumptions were not made. No application can be installed without your root password, for instance; downloaded files can’t even be executed without specifically making them executable; and access to edit system files is restricted by a very robust permissions system.
All of that, plus Linux’s much lower market share, also means that no malware authors are really wasting their time trying to write Linux malware. The attack vector just isn’t worth the extra effort.
So no, there’s no integrated antivirus; but for most users in most situations, it’s not needed at all.
Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?
Your mileage may vary significantly, but anecdotally it seems like most architectures from AMD and Nvidia have good support.
Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?
Maybe, but like with Windows, I assume you have to really go out of your way to do so.
And also, what distro might be best for me?
I’ve only used Ubuntu and Mint. Mint has so far been the easiest and most user-friendly of the two. It’s also regularly touted as the best for newcomers.
Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?
Not greatly. The games that have anti-cheat won’t work on Linux. Anti-cheat is a security problem anyway (because they circumvent the kernel policies) and so linux will never support these.
Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?
for the ones that work yes. There’s a list of how well games work on linux, there’s a website for that.
If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?
For some “difficult” non-anti-cheat games there are some workarounds. If we’re talking about apps and not games, then it’s best to use the Linux equivalents, and forget the Windows ones.
Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?
While there’s WINE and .NET for Linux, Windows apps don’t really work well. They usually break on new wine versions, or they don’t work at all. For apps, use Linux native apps. Games generally work better than apps because they don’t use too many of the Windows APIs (they’re mostly 3D stuff, and not app apis).
How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?
It depends on the distro. Some distros have graphical front ends, some you have to use the terminal to update the OS.
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?
There’s ClamAV, and also you should be turning the firewall On (some distros come with it, others you have to install it manually). Don’t downloads random binary packages, only from the distro itself, or official packages.
Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?
Overall, yeah… but it does depend on the version of the driver, distro you’re using, hardware etc. I use Intel graphics cards (dedicated) because I find their drivers to be more mature than nvidia’s, for example.
Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?
Very unlikely, near zero.
And also, what distro might be best for me?
Everyone is recommended to start with Linux Mint, because it’s the distro with the most GUI front-end tools to do stuff. Yes, there are some distros that are more game-oriented, but they expect the user to know what they’re doing. Start with Mint.
I’m only responding to the lack of computer skills portion of the OP as I’m sure others have already answered points plenty and probably better than I could.
If you’ve used Windows, you have enough basic computer skills to get you started. You’ll learn the Linux by using Linux just like you learned Windows by using Windows. There are plenty of mainstream distros that give you an out of the box working experience that is a great starting ground. It does take research and try things out instead of wanting someone to give you the perfect play book.
This is something I tell people all the time. It’s just as easy to troubleshoot on Linux as it is on Windows the biggest issue is that most people are just kinda innately aware of Windows troubleshooting by virtue of the fact that they’ve been doing it for so long. Linux is probably just as complicated skill wise, but most people just aren’t used to it yet.
And that’s especially true for gamers. If you’ve gone through the dance of tweaking BIOS settings or DDU removing drivers and reinstalling them, then you’re probably gonna do fine on Linux. The only difference is sometimes there won’t be a GUI you have to go hunt down. It will be like 3 commands someone has already written out for you that you copy/paste into the CLI. Which is WAY better in my opinion.
That’s true and not true at the same time. The one advantage Windows has in this regard is that everyone is working on the same “distro” as it were. With Linux the various components can vary enough to be confusing. I think that is why it’s important to choose a distro with a sizeable community.
Something like Ubuntu, or an arch derivative like endeavouros are a good choice for that reason.
I would also warm against the copy paste of commands that you don’t know what you are doing with. The one nice thing is that in 2025 you can drop a command into your choice of LLM assistant and get a pretty good description of what it does without breaking out the man pages.
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Please, be nice. We’re all here to help each other.
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Is asking people to be nice an unfortunate way to live? Works well for me. I bear bad news a lot in my daily life and I am aware that perception of written text is in the eye of the beholder so I tend to tone down when bringing written messages.
As for the use of the word enshittified. That all boils down to your initial perception of Windows. You feel like it has been awful since… well, forever apparently. Many people disagree. It’s a matter of opinion, not facts. Whether I agree or disagree with your opinion doesn’t matter. The person you replied to felt like Windows used to be a decent OS that has turned for the worse to please their business customers. Somehow that’s how the term was coined.
‘‘Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.’’
Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?
No. Thanks to Steam Deck, most popular windows games also work on Linux. See https://www.protondb.com/ for a complete list of 18,000 titles… Someone already mentioned that kernel level anti-cheat is the big, obvious blocker.
Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?
Im guessing that most moders target Windows users therefore, don’t think mods would be AS easy. Not saying modding wouldn’t exist or work at all.Edit: see sp3ctr4l’s reply to this comment. They know more than meIf a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?
There are workarounds. Linux has some great alternative software to popular paid stuff. See LibreOffice or Krita.
There are also more advanced options to run Windows apps under Linux, see Wine or Virtual Machines
Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?
Yes. Similar to the above answer/ similar to aforementioned Proton. For .NET specifically, there is a Linux runtime.
How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?
This can depend a lot on what distribution you’re running, but definitely, there are ones with easy buttons for whole-system updates.
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?
It’s different and probably overall better than windows. Most distros are much better out of the box than windows.
Open source is ususually a security advantage because (long story short) security mistakes can be caught by more people.
I don’t have a good answer for you on anti virus. I am very privacy and security conscious and I dont use one on linux. My personal opinion is that you don’t need one and shouldn’t need one if you’re not downloading sketch stuff.
Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?
Totally. GPU drivers are much, much better than they used to be.
Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?
Theoretically. You would have to try really hard, but for normal use, no. More likely, you could lose data or access to the system if you misconfigure stuff (just like with Windows)
Distro recommendations. My personal opinions, don’t flame me.
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Bazzite. hard to mess up, gamer focused, super simple updates, and targeted support for gamer hardware. Feels like a cross between steam deck and windows. Less support for tinkering but if you never want to touch the terminal, this is my choice.
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Pop!OS. Simplified Linux with great driver and steam support with easy updates. More tinkering support than Bazzite
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Linux Mint. Easy to start on but more traditional back-end. Much more support (forum posts) than the previous two. A lot of what works on Debian or Ubuntu works the same on Mint, so you’ll be able to do all kinds of fiddling
To add in about game modding on Linux:
https://github.com/limo-app/limo
https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.limo_app.limo
Limo is a universal mod manager that is linux native.
And I do mean universal. It’ll work with literally any game, you just have to take a bit of extra time to configure things for games that do not yet have a supported preset configuration out of the box… but at this point, that includes most games that are generally reliant on some kind of mod manager type program on Windows, to keep track of 10s or 100s of simultaneous mods.
It works very much along the same lines as something like Mod Organizer 2, though there are some differences, read the wiki.
It sets up a virtual file system that allows mods to be set up outside of the main game directory itself, and will override them such that the mods actually load, but they can be ‘undeployed’ to revert back to vanilla, you can set up different profiles of different mod configurations and deploy/undeploy what you like.
It can also manage load orders, supports formats such as fomod and similar for games like Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim, you can set up tags and category groupings, and it also shows you conflicts between mods down to the specific files, showing you a chain of overwrites to the final file from the final loaded mod.
It doesn’t support things like LOOT, which purport to autogenerate correct load orders… but frankly, thats fine, because shit like that doesn’t even work properly in situations you’d use it in on Windows 90% of the time.EDIT: Wow, apparently it does support LOOT now, it did not a few updates ago.
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I have successfully gotten FONV working using Limo to set up uh… there’s a variant of the Viva New Vegas mod setup guide aimed at Steam Deck users, but it tells you to set up Mod Organizer 2 on the Deck… which you can do, but its rather input laggy and there are other inconveniences…
Here it is, Mirelurked Viva New Vegas:
https://ashtonqlb.github.io/mirelurked-vnv/intro.html
I had to alter a few steps from this to get it working with Limo, but they were basically just… set up Limo instead of MO2, and you have to handle NVSE a bit differently, because it literally replaces/overrides the entire main game exe.
…
I have also used Limo to mod Cyberpunk 2077, works with more in depth frameworks like CET, RedExt, etc, as well as using the Decky Framegen plugin to insert FSR 3.1 Upscaling and Framegen into CP77, which gives better quality and fps than the official FSR 2 and 3 implementations that come with the vanilla game and are vanilla supported on a Deck.
You basically just have to launch the vanilla game via the normal launcher first, check the ‘enable mods’ switch, fully load the game…
Then you can set up the Framegen mod, which adds a custom command in steam to the launch parameters… and then you can also setup the ‘skip intro’ mod, which is reliant on both the mod being present, as well as additional command line parameters…
There are a bunch of reddit posts complaining that the FrameGen mod doesn’t allow other additional launch arguments, but they are wrong.
All you have to do is append those additional launch args … at the end of the FrameGen mod’s launch arg. This just doesn’t seem to be explicitly documented anywhere, by anyone… I may have been the first person to figure this out?
Anyway, after that bit of silliness, setting up other mods for CP 77 using Limo is fairly straightforward.
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… I am doing all this on Bazzite on a Deck, but you could do it on… presumably any linux distro that supports flatpaks and proton (the translation layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux).
There will always be a few ‘weird’ mods that are just totally reliant on a whole bunch of Windows specific things to work, or just cannot be made to work without actually overwriting some core game files in the main, real directory itself…
And, some of these mods will require a windows component dependency, like vc_2017 or vc_2022, you set those up with something like ProtonTricks or SteamTinkerLaunch to modify the proton config per game, instead of trying to install the exe system wide as 99% of the windows oriented mods will tell you to do…
But so far, I have found either my own solutions for these cases, or someone else already has, or someone has just made basically a linux compatible equivalent for such a windows reliant mod.
… You can also just choose to run MO2 on Linux, it will work, its just… buggy, and overlycomplicated, imo, you’ve got to set up a custom wineprefix for the MO2 UI to not do dumbshit, give it thr dependencies it needs, and then you’ve got to do this for each different game you want to mod with MO2.
I found that Limo is sufficiently capable and much less hassle to use once you take the time to understand its differences from MO2.
EDIT:
Also, for anti virus, ClamAV exists. I… think it is literally the only AV for linux?
Ooh, Limo has a Flatpak? Nice. I’m running Bazzite on my laptop and have been wanting to play FNV for the first time but I’ve got it on Epic through Heroic Launcher. I’m guessing the file paths will be different but it should otherwise mod more or less the same as you said, I’ll have to try it. What kind of weird stuff did you have to do to get NVSE working?
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