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

It will be somewhat affected, but most games can be played via wine/proton.

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

Depends on the game and mods? Some games like Minecraft can run and be modded natively in Linux.

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

Again, there is wine/proton for that.

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

If I remember correctly, you can install .NET, DirectX and so on in wine.

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

You are going to love updates coming from Windows. Basically you run your package manager update command and everything is taken care of.

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’m no security expert, but the consensus is that it’s more secure. I’ll leave it to more competent people to explain.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Depends. NVIDIA used to be annoying to manage.

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

About this, I have no idea.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

I have seen Linux Mint often suggested to new users, but picking a distro is a topic that deserves a whole new post.

How many scalpers, also?

Clickbait-ish title, the prosthesis is not “mind controlled” but uses wireless electrodes that record muscle contraction. Cool tech, though.

How does Mint work with (old) NVIDIA drivers? I’m going to have to do the switch sometime this year and I am still debating which distro would give me the least troubles running games and applications via Proton / Wine.

Yes, with some work

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182758-affinity-suite-v2-on-linux-wine/

OneNote for office 2016 was a brilliant piece of software (for once). Then they gutted it out, moved it to the cloud and forced you to use the crappy win10 version.

That’s more or less the time I switched my notes to Notion (first), then to Obsidian.

Have a partnership with Microsoft and ship Windows 12 as the new “AI only” OS. Every command must go through ChatGPT to work. Then push updates to older Win11 OS to make them unusable.