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?
Package managers. Linux had this before Windows. Granted, Linux needed package managers, because of the myriad and complex dependency trees that software can have. I prefer to install software through a package manager because it not only takes care of dependencies for me, it will take care of updates, too. I will only install something downloaded from a website as an absolute last resort. (And then, of course, making sure it’s a trustworthy source.)
It’s rather complex, but you probably won’t have to deal with it unless you have to do some kind of systems administration. On a day-to-day basis, the OS might ask you to enter your password to install software or make an update, and that’s the extent of it.
Basically, every file has 3 categories of permissions: user, group, and others, and each category has 3 permissions: read, write, and execute. This is transparently handled by the system for you, though, and I can’t even remember the last time I had to change permissions on a file. It’s a good thing to be aware of if you have to do troubleshooting, though.
Just the opposite. Vulnerabilities get spotted sooner because there’s more eyes on the code, and they’re often patched quicker because anybody can submit a patch to an open-source project.
I’ve never heard of any distro shipping with antivirus software, but I’ve also never heard of a Linux virus. Of course, I’m sure they exist, but I’ve just never heard of one. I’ve been using Linux for over two decades, and I’ve never used an antivirus or gotten a virus in all that time, and I’ve never even heard of a Linux user getting a virus. Part of that is due to Linux being more secure and part of that is due to Linux being less popular. If you’re writing a virus, you aren’t going to try to jump through the insane hoops of Linux security when you could target Windows which is A) less secure and B) has a fuckton more users.
Obviously, use common sense, don’t install from untrusted sources, etc. etc., but viruses aren’t the omnipresent threat on Linux like they are on Windows.