4d ago

I have used Windows all my life, and I have some questions.

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?

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167 comments

Mint focuses on stability as evident from its decision to use Ubuntu LTS versions as it’s base. In case I need to spell it out, LTS versions are generally more stable and reliable.
Stability is essential for industry applications, but is actually TERRIBLE for beginners, especially ones that want to game. I could go into the reasons why, but I doubt you care. I don't agree that this is a selling point for beginners in the first place, which is why I didn't mention it. Stability does not mean "does not crash" in a linux context, it means UNCHANGING. Extremely old software is not good for beginners who want things to just work.
And you brought up X11 as a negative, but there’s a good reason Mint is staying on X11. Yes, Wayland is the future and eventually Mint will adopt Wayland as well, when Wayland becomes more stable. I’m the mean time Mint stays on X11 because X11 is very stable, extremely stable compared to Wayland if you have an Nvidia card.
Give me evidence that there are more issues with wayland than X11 and i'll believe you.
Mint also has better out the box support. For example to my knowledge for Nvidia Fedora comes with Nouvuea drivers which means for gaming you need to go through an extra process to get proprietary drivers. Mint has out the box support for Nvidia drivers. This is less of a thing when compared to Bazzite, but still a reason why to pick Mint as a beginner distro.
Bazzite fixes this and is why I recommend it over fedora kinoite. Irrelevant point, not actually true, actually, the opposite is true precisely because of the last point. You realize stability means out of date kernel versions, and out of date kernel versions means... worse out of the box support!
And the reason people recommend Mint is in those first two points. Mint deliberately sacrifices fancy bells and whistles to be as stable as possible. You not knowing that shows how little you know about Mint.
Wellp, those are bad points, which is why i didn't make them, sorry!
- Okay, this has turned into a complete waste of time. It's impossible to talk to a person who makes up their own definition for words and demands proof of something most of the Linux community is in agreement. You're the Linux equivalent of a flat earther.
  
  I did not invent this definition, it is industry standard...
  https://bitdepth.thomasrutter.com/2010/04/02/stable-vs-stable-what-stable-means-in-software/
  you're very confident and not well informed.
  "A stable software release is so named because it is unchanging. Its behaviour, functionality, specification or API is considered ‘final’ for that version. Apart from security patches and bug fixes, the software will not change for as long as that version of the software is supported, usually from 1 to many years."
  your first point even directly contradicts your second...
  
  From your own article
  Or, the fact that the same term is understood in two different and sometimes conflicting ways may indicate that the term is not an ideal one in the first place.
  I'm sorry that English is not my first language and I'm not aware of the subtle difference in meaning you're after, but really all you've proven is that you're a pedantic little troll who understood what I said and still chose to be obtuse about it. Another example how of this discussion is a waste of time.
  
  ...but that still means everything I said is correct and you were a jerk to me for being correct, no?
  is it my fault you don't know these things and instead of having a learning attitude, you say I have no idea what I'm talking about and am a flat earther when you don't even know what defines a stable distro?
  even if I use your uninformed definition it's still wrong... there is no evidence fedora crashes more than mint, or is less reliable...
  
  Mint focuses on ~~stability~~ reliability as evident from its decision to use Ubuntu LTS versions as it’s base. In case I need to spell it out, LTS versions are generally more reliable.
  And you brought up X11 as a negative, but there’s a good reason Mint is staying on X11. Yes, Wayland is the future and eventually Mint will adopt Wayland as well, when Wayland becomes more ~~stable~~ reliable. I’m the mean time Mint stays on X11 because X11 is very ~~stable~~ reliable, extremely ~~stable~~ reliable compared to Wayland if you have an Nvidia card.
  Mint also has better out the box support. For example to my knowledge for Nvidia Fedora comes with Nouvuea drivers which means for gaming you need to go through an extra process to get proprietary drivers. Mint has out the box support for Nvidia drivers. This is less of a thing when compared to Bazzite, but still a reason why to pick Mint as a beginner distro.
  FTFY you little grammar nazi.
  
  Mint focuses on stability reliability as evident from its decision to use Ubuntu LTS versions as it’s base. In case I need to spell it out, LTS versions are generally more reliable.
  This is false, they're just less likely to change. They can crash more frequently.
  And you brought up X11 as a negative, but there’s a good reason Mint is staying on X11. Yes, Wayland is the future and eventually Mint will adopt Wayland as well, when Wayland becomes more stable reliable. I’m the mean time Mint stays on X11 because X11 is very stable reliable, extremely stable reliable compared to Wayland if you have an Nvidia card.
  There's no evidence that X11 is less reliable than wayland, and the reason mint stays on x11 has NOTHING to do with this, and everything to do with cinnamon not yet supporting it...
  Mint also has better out the box support. For example to my knowledge for Nvidia Fedora comes with Nouvuea drivers which means for gaming you need to go through an extra process to get proprietary drivers. Mint has out the box support for Nvidia drivers. This is less of a thing when compared to Bazzite, but still a reason why to pick Mint as a beginner distro.
  This is still false, stable distros have worse support out of the box because they use an older kernel version and the kernel ships the drivers.
  That set of fixes still left everything being wrong or unsupported by any evidence.
  
  They can crash more frequently.
  Where are your stats for this.
  and the reason mint stays on x11 has NOTHING to do with this
  source?
  stable distros have worse support out of the box because they use an older kernel version and the kernel ships the drivers.
  At this point I don't even know what that means because maybe you have some other weird definition to pull out of your ass. Give me that in 5th grader level.
  
  https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213095
  https://discuss.getsol.us/d/6564-cant-boot-into-the-lts-kernel/3
  https://discuss.getsol.us/d/4899-let-s-talk-about-the-lts-kernels
  lts kernels should not be used with newer hardware... because they don't have modern software support, anyone that uses modern hardware risks being unable to boot with them. I shouldn't have said crashes but the issues are numerous.
  The second thing doesn't require a source, they don't have the manpower to implement it in cinnamon, look at the github pulse: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse
  https://wiki.debian.org/Wayland debian, notorious for being the most stable distro by far already uses it by default...
  At this point I don't even know what that means because maybe you have some other weird definition to pull out of your ass. Give me that in 5th grader level.
  i have only used industry standard terminology and what I said is straightforward... kernel has drivers, old kernel no has new drivers, new drivers needed for hardware support, lts kernel old.
  
  https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213095
  https://discuss.getsol.us/d/6564-cant-boot-into-the-lts-kernel/3
  https://discuss.getsol.us/d/4899-let-s-talk-about-the-lts-kernels
  lts kernels should not be used with newer hardware… because they don’t have modern software support, anyone that uses modern hardware risks being unable to boot with them. I shouldn’t have said crashes but the issues are numerous.
  So you don't have stats you have anecdotal evidence.
  The second thing doesn’t require a source, they don’t have the manpower to implement it in cinnamon, look at the github pulse: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse
  It clearly requires a source because Cinnamon 6.0 has Wayland as an experimental support and Mint team has said they are planning to eventually move to Wayland.
  https://wiki.debian.org/Wayland debian, notorious for being the most stable distro by far already uses it by default…
  For Gnome. You've been pretty much talking about KDE (unless you're now magically going to do a 180 and start saying how Windows users would have a better time learning GNOME), which if you bothered to actually check what you're saying would have noticed the
  however you are recommended to read the detailed wiki section for KDE on Wayland, especially if you are using an NVIDIA GPU.
  Clearly implying you should expect running into issues.
  i have only used industry standard terminology and what I said is straightforward…
  Somehow the things you say are straight-forward seem to be nothing but.
  kernel has drivers, old kernel no has new drivers, new drivers needed for hardware support, lts kernel old.
  In theory. Except in practice we're not talking about kernels that are 5+ years old. Latest Mint version is running on Ubuntu Noble which is using Kernel version 6.8 which supports all the latest CPU-s and GPU-s. Just because it's not using the very latest kernel version doesn't mean it's not capable of supporting the latest hardware.
  
  So you don’t have stats you have anecdotal evidence.
  Actually, these are appeals to authority, a major distro is telling you not to use LTS kernel versions... people who y'know, have stats
  "Recently we have had a number of issues with hardware regressions on the LTS kernels, rendering systems with newer hardware unbootable."
  Directly from the source of a major distro... I don't think you actually read my sources.
  It clearly requires a source because Cinnamon 6.0 has Wayland as an experimental support and Mint team has said they are planning to eventually move to Wayland[5].
  that's exactly what i've said... nothing i've said contradicts that, just that it's going to take forever for that to get good. Gnome and KDE already have full proper support and have for ages. Cinnamon will take FOREVER. Notice they only extremely recently launched EXPERIMENTAL support, it's not even supported yet. Cinnamon development is incredibly slow: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly
  compare that to JUST the kde text editor: https://github.com/KDE/kate/pulse/monthly
  Clearly implying you should expect running into issues.
  The hilarity of this is that those issues are BECAUSE of their choice to be insanely stable (note: this yet again means UNCHANGING)... modern KDE versions have minimal such issues. You just accidentally made yet another point AGAINST your case.
  In theory. Except in practice we’re not talking about kernels that are 5+ years old. Latest Mint version is running on Ubuntu Noble which is using Kernel version 6.8 which supports all the latest CPU-s and GPU-s. Just because it’s not using the very latest kernel version doesn’t mean it’s not capable of supporting the latest hardware.
  Actually, the problem is more fundamental: https://lwn.net/Articles/700530/
  And maybe it supports the hardware, but there are performance and instability issues that can't or haven't been backported... honestly, don't you think all stable distros would only be using LTS kernels if there weren't issues with them?

167 comments