With lasers! Shooting through the fiber optic cable, but still. LASERS!

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

That will depend on the games you play, and what platform you use. If you are using Steam, you can enable the proton layer have more access to games, but if the game in question uses any type of kernel level anti cheat chances are it’s not going to work.

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

Depends on what you are used to, if you are using mod managers and which ones.

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

A lot of work has been done with WINE, games on Linux, and Proton. You’ll need to do a little bit of reading to see if it can work on Linux, but the community can often be awesome and already have found a solution. There are also a lot of great alternatives to Windows/Mac only software you can try.

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

Depends on your distro but most can install .net, you’ll need to do a bit of reading.

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

Yes, there are package managers that you can use to install and update software, some distro’s even have a shop like interface.

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’ve only ever had to use a virus scanner twice in my Linux journey and both of those times it was on a server. Because Linux is open source everybody can see what is going on in the code and this way bugs or security issues can be found and patched quicker.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Depends, if you are using AMD you should be fine, Nvidia has functioning drivers as well, I can’t speak for Intel ARC support because I’ve never used it…

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

I’ve never broken my hardware, but I’ve broken my system a few times by ignoring the warnings the system gave me, always got it to work again.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Linux Mint might be a good one, the Cinnamon is great for beginners, but there are many flavors you can choose from. Start with a live system which will not require you to install anything just yet, but you’ll get a feeling for how everything works. After trying it out live you can decide if you would like to install it. But remember that when trying it live you are limited in what you can do.

Red Hat 8.0, the Linux Starter 2003 double cd edition. From there I tried my first Ubuntu when they where still sending out free cd’s which was version 6.06 LTS. After that I dabbled a bit jumping from distro to distro to try out different flavors, tinkering a bit for fun and even tried to build my own with Arch. All the while keeping my Windows (XP, 7, 10) daily driver as my main rig. Finally switched over to Pop_OS! a few years ago as my daily for work. I’ve been thinking about switching over my gaming rig to a Linux distro but haven’t figured out which one is the best one and requires the least amount of tinkering.

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https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/ubuntu-2404-bluetooth-connect-fix Bluetooth issues are still a present problem in Ubuntu 24.04LTS, which appear to be fixed in 24.10. If I want to restart the Bluetooth stack I have to do that in the terminal, on Windows, you go to the services window and restart it from there (not that I’ve ever had a Bluetooth issue on Windows). Just because you don’t experience it does not mean it does not exist, you appear to be one of those toxic it works on my machine people.

It’s not a weird myth, have you ever worked with average users? Some of them have trouble opening a PDF or don’t know how to import a CVS file in Excel. Power users have always been tinkering in their OS that’s nothing new, but I’m talking about the average Joe.

It’s a brand new (one year old now) Thinkpad X1 Carbon, with a clean installed Pop_OS! system, so I don’t know why it does that, but it has done it at least ten times since I got it. Also after installing VirtualBox I’ve been have kernel panics occasionally when shutting down the system ¯\(ツ)/¯

The main problem still is that for some configuration you still need to use the CLI, the average user does not want to touch that no matter how powerful it is, they want a fully functional GUI that lets you so exactly the same thing but by clicking on buttons. Pair that with drivers that either do not exist or will not work for (some) of your hardware, odd crashed like the Bluetooth stack crapping out and not working anymore until you restart the system, or the system that hangs from hibernation with a black screen. So unless those hurdles are tackled the Linux adoption rate will stay low because the average user wants a system that works, and not one they have to debug.

I’ve been on and off different distros of Linux since Ubuntu 6 using Pop_OS! as my daily driver for work a few years now, and the same problems I had then are still here today which is a shame honestly.

The ink can dry out or some contaminant can get on the ball and preventing it from rolling. What I usually do is run the ball along the sole of my shoe (or use anything that has high friction material) 9 times out of 10 it makes the pen work again.

Valve does not limit you in where your game is sold, the publisher of the game has to set this and the publisher for Helldivers 2 is PlayStation Publishing LLC.

Windows OS was the better OS as the time, ran great on low spec hardware, and the tile system and integration of apps was a a lot better than anything Android or iOS has to offer at the time. The downfall was hardly any apps, changing the OS so much every update that the people that were developing left the eco-system because they where fed up of having to change their apps again, and hardly any first party apps. The promise that you could run Android apps on your Windows phone device was never delivered. Also Steve doubling down that he was too busy to use apps so why would you want them on your phone thing.

I still love my Lumia and turn in on from time to time