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.
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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.’’
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.
