People have answered most questions. The gaming thing is a total lie though.
Some specific games will work kinda okay. The vast majority will work worse. And a good chunk of super popular games won’t work at all. Just dual boot and keep gaming on windows.
People in here straight up lie to push for Linux when it’s really not necessary. It’s great at what it does. And it’s improving in what it doesn’t.
What are you talking about? Out of the 248 games in my Steam library, 190 of them are rated as working on Linux (Steam Deck Verified and Steam Deck Playable). 21 of them are untested, which means only 37 of them are rated as unplayable. Of those most are unplayable because they’re either VR games or they have restrictive anticheat. Some of them, like Medium, say they’re unplayable but work fine for me. I’m assuming that’s because the Steam Deck isn’t powerful enough to play Medium at more than 15 fps, but on my PC, it runs around 100 fps. Others, like GTA V, say they’re unplayable, even though I’ve fully played through them with no issue, even on the Steam Deck. I’m guessing that’s because GTA Online has anticheat, but I’ve played the single player and online and both have worked fine for me. (I just looked it up. They added BattleEye to GTA Online late last year, so yeah, GTA V is rated unplayable, even though the Story Mode is fully playable.)
I’ve even gotten games that refuse to work on Windows (like the original American Mcgee’s Alice and the original Journeyman Project) running great in Linux.
After running through a few of the untested games, some of them are untested, even though they have native Linux ports that run just fine. I’m assuming that’s because they haven’t been tested specifically on the Steam Deck.
Other than the ones with restrictive anticheat, everything I’ve tried from my Epic Games library works great too.
Of the games I play, almost none of them have worked worse on Linux than they do on Windows. Most work exactly the same, and a few work better. One (exactly one) has worked worse, for about a month, then a new version of Proton fixed the missing cutscenes.
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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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