1. yes you do. A good distro I recommend newbies is Linux Mint, because it’s visually similar to windows. Another great option for beginners is Pop!OS, because the developers take more care to automate things that you might encounter when first starting to use Linux. Overall, it doesn’t really matter that much what distribution you choose in terms of what software is available, it all comes down to design choices that change how hard things are to do (but reward you with more customization, of course)

2. you will not be able to play some games that have an anticheat that forbids linux. The main culprit is EasyAntiCheat (while it does support linux, enabling that support is a choice by the game’s developer). The main games I have noticed can’t work are Fortnite (EAC), Hunt: showdown (EAC), league of legends & Valorant (Vanguard), R6 Siege (EAC) and PUBG (EAC). You can use protondb to learn what games in your steam library are known to simply not work.

Don’t expect games that you own on the windows store to work at all (this includes Xbox game pass). Most of them are available on steam, but that requires buying them again.

Most of the other stuff works, generally. Valve’s Proton supports a very large part of most games today, and unless the game you want to launch is very old or specifically doesn’t want you to use Linux, chances are the game will work first try, especially indies. Protondb is a great help to see what parameters one needs to use to make it work if it doesn’t first try. Make sure to “enable proton compatibility for all games” in steam’s main options, otherwise it won’t let you download game.

For tools that aren’t on steam but target steam games (for example mod managers), you should use protontricks (it’s most likely in your distro’s package manager, you don’t need to download it from GitHub) to launch the tool’s exe inside of the proton context of that game (steam maintains a separate pseudo-windows install (a “wine prefix”) for each game that uses proton). From there, the tool will behave as if you launched it on windows.

For tools that stand alone, you can add them to steam as a non-steam game and in it’s properties, force it to use proton, which allows you to launch e.g. cracked games. I also recommend using Bottles to manage your third-party launchers.

3. most likely you’ll be fine. You’re unlikely to encounter any issues that haven’t been encountered by anyone before, so don’t hesitate to Google and to ask for help on various forums. You don’t need to know how to program to use Linux, though it does unlock some pretty nice things (it also does on windows for that matter)

4. windows 10 LTSC will continue being available for a few years. If you need a windows partition (imo you only do need it if you want to play games that have restrictive anticheat), I suggest installing it on a separate disk altogether, because windows tends to not play nice with other partitions on the same disk, and will create headaches you could have avoided.

5. welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy your time away from ads in the start menu.

Also, if someone claims asylum, international law explicitly forbids sending them back to their country (not that international law has any bearing whatsoever on this but y’know, add a layer on top)

I mean, signing a change.org petition has resulted in absolutely nothing, ever, so it’s not like your vote is exactly vital here

Who fucking cares what the reddit mod of /r/macos thinks man…

My latest project runs on a VM I use vscode’s ssh editing feature on. I edit the only copy of the file in existence (I have made no backup and there is no version control) and then I restart the systems service.

So what if I mess it up? Big deal. The discord bot goes down for a few minutes and I fix it.

Same goes for the machine configs. Ideally the machines are stable, the critical ones get backups, and if they aren’t stable then I suppose the best way to fix it would be in prod ( my VMs run debian, they’re stable).

XY problem: you’d spend more efforts and resources sourcing and installing this thing (that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist) rather than fix the existing sensor that’s already in the mouse. Fix the existing sensor that’s in the mouse.

See the Nothing Phone (2a)

You can also use yt music revanced.

The drivers are generally available pretty quickly, however I find that stable distros do not ship them, which is understandable but unfortunate. Debian (my beloved) is egregiously bad at it.

The people responsible for Titanfall no longer work there. Apex is basically on life support by devs that came in after the game released. Nothing good could come out of tf|3

Submarines also famously don’t have windows

Yeah it does

Because this is a safe space, not connected to my real life identity.

Doesn’t this mean that the system is never up to date? If so, please don’t.

This is precisely what the “much privacy, muh data” crowd was warning us us against. I try to avoid saying I’m queer online, because there’s a very real chance my government turns fascist and asks google/facebook/whatever for a list, and they haven’t given me a reason to think they wouldn’t give that list without thinking about it twice.

Sorry, only spyware laden with ads is available currently at that price.

I mean, not necessarily your fault but at least you know someone could care to fix it, and you didn’t spend $100 for the privilege.

Almost as if that mazlow guy had a point or something

I agree with the overall sentiment, however:

Lootboxes are at least a conscious action you must take. They definitely have the same problems as gambling (because that’s what they are), but you can also choose not to engage with them. Ads however, are forced upon you, and do things that you cannot see (track you) and cannot turn off.

My current daily driver is a 13€ blue switches thing for AliExpress with 20€ DSA keycaps also from AliExpress. Both are fine.