Unfortunately gaming is about the least Linux friendly hobby there is. For most tasks you can find software that will make it relatively painless to wean people off Windows but many games, especially new ones, dont work out of the box on Linux. Most of the time, theyre going to have to fiddle with things to get games to work, if they can work and youre going to have to justify to them why they should do that.
- Install Steam.
- Play games.
This literally happened to me:
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Install Kubuntu 22.04 and Steam on my kid’s PC.
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Download Brickrigs, his favorite game.
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Crashes on title screen
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Spend the next week sporadically troubleshooting when I get a free few minutes here and there.
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After week 2, I finally decide for shits and giggles to download and install the “official” AMD driver from AMD’s website instead of using the built in kernel one like every goddamn reply on every forum post has been telling me to use, because the PC’s GPU is about ten years old at this point and the driver that came with the distro doesn’t work with it.
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Lo and behold, Brickrigs works.
THIS is how Linux “works”, a LOT of the time.
The new
amdgpukernel driver only launched in 2015 and it was buggy and unstable for a while. GPUs from around that era default to using the olderradeonkernel driver which lacks Vulkan support.Polaris (Radeon RX 400 series from 2016) and newer just work, older cards can take some prodding.
I’ve seen this exact situation so many times.
- Ask the community about gaming on Linux
- Get the response that it works (install Steam and play)
- Install Steam
- Game doesn’t work
- Invest hours in troubleshooting
- Have the community explain why it doesn’t work in your particular case
- After hours of fiddling get it working
I’ve been in this situation myself so many times. I like fiddling with my system but even I ended up dual-booting Windows just for gaming.
Let’s get this image then fixed.
Linux gaming works (most of the time without any issues)
What you should know before you switch to Linux:
Not every Hardware is supported as well as on Windows. Old Hardware may work better or worse than on Windows. New hardware may not work at all. Don’t buy sth. that isn’t at least half a year on the market.
Check protondb if your games do run on linux. For some people even silver there isn’t an enjoyable status. Gold should be working as on windows with minor issues and platin is works just fine.
Be ready to learn a new operating System! Linux isn’t Windows and the terminal is key to fix issues.
Or Nvidia either according to all the people telling me my problems aren’t valid.
So if you want a good time with Linux you need and AMD GPU or integrated graphics, and it can’t be too new, and it can’t be too old.
I think linux’s image is pretty accurate
Also “Be ready to learn a new operating System! Linux isn’t Windows and the terminal is key to fix issues.” I agree. I think that’s not a good idea for a lot of people though. So I think posts like OP’s are kinda stupid. People shouldn’t try to push Linux on people who shouldn’t use it.
I mean most people don’t have issues with their gpu. But if you do then get ready for day long trouble shooting.
But if you can’t fix problems that my arise don’t use Linux.
On the other hand if you only use Internet and occasionally a text Editor like libre writer you won’t notice the difference between Linux or Windows
I’m a long-term Linux user living mostly on the terminal, knowing quite a lot about the operating system. And sometimes I enjoy tinkering to get a game running even more than playing it. But in the end for some games it just doesn’t work. Of course it depends on the game and hardware and what not, but in the end if I can’t play all my games on Linux I have to bite the bullet and check for alternatives. And for me this statement is hard as hell.
yeah the radeon module is hilariously broken.
couldn’t even get Firefox to work until I forced amdgpu.Firefox is probably looking for modern hardware acceleration for its rendering engine to work.
i mean it worked but only had 1/10 chance of starting (which basically made it unusable)
uhh brickrigs works perfectly for me?
on the built-in amdgpu kernel module (since my laptop is like 8 years old i had to force amdgpu instead of radeon drivers)radeon is hilariously broken, even firefox breaks (won’t start sometimes) while it’s in use
Reading this made me flinch and this hasn’t even happened to me
To be fair, a friend of mine had blue screen playing LOL on windows for a month until he found the solution: rename a random .dll of the NVIDIA driver and than reinstall the driver.
Weird stuff happens with PC, with Win, Linux, Mac or anything but people always point to Linux. Yeah on Linux we see more of these things but PC gaming in general is not so user friendly like people think it is.
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3: try every proton version
4: try proton GE
5: (proccessing Vulcan shaders)
6: change launch arguments
7: use protontricks to install some weird dependancy
8: sacrifice your pets firstborn at an alter to achieve a running stateNot that hard lol, get good bitches. Also fuck you for wanting to play rainbow 6 siege. All my homies hate rainbow 6 siege.
Get booted out of said game because the anti cheat freaked out thanks to Linux.
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RIP Steam Deck
You’re full of shit. Also, an increasing number of games I play perform better under Linux+Proton than Windows.
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What if game is not on steam and it’s online game that I’ll get banned if I use 3rd party client?
That’s becoming less and less common these days, thankfully. Especially since the Steam Deck, gaming on Linux is just becoming better and better.
Sure, but still multiplayer games that are not on steam and have some sort of anticheat or other stuff like that are unlikely to show up on deck. Unless company steps in and release version for steam deck/Linux (which they don’t cause it’s probably a lot of work for minimal returns), you have to play it on windows. At least I can dual boot on my deck to play those games.
Still common enough for plenty of people to be put off by it
Getting banned is still common?
Oh yeah, I might’ve misread. I thought the comment I replied to was just about anticheat support in general
What online game do you want to play besides maybe Counter Strike?
Genshin Impact. I used to play league of legends but not anymore.
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right and wrong, games play nowadays, but good luck getting the same accessibility and flexibility as windows, you wanna download a cool new mod? No problem! Oops but the mod loader is only windows based and gives wine a seizure, you can probably do it, but not without an hour or more of work, not exactly casual user friendly quite yet. And god forbid the game uses a special pheriphal
No, they are right.
It took an enormous amount of fiddling for me to get games working on Debian 12
I’ve been using Steam in FlatPak on NixOS for a couple years now.
The only games I’ve found that didn’t work were due to anti-cheat rootkit stuff, which would probably be a bigger deal if I cared about online gaming. And I’ve had to change the Proton version a couple times, because the beta (default) seems to break a game occasionally. Overall: it’s astoundingly good compared to where it was 5+ years ago.
I agree with you, but it’s just not ready for the average person.
Case in point: regardless of which version of Steam I install it goes into a crash-restart cycle if I open it from gnome. The only way to run it is to type “steam” in the console.
The issue persists regardless of whether I use the .deb or flatpak.
It is literally happening with Kubuntu 22.04.
So far I’ve only had an issue with one game (easy to fix, I just restarted steam). I’m relatively new to Linux. (Switched because I didn’t feel like paying for windows when I built my PC). To be transparent, I did use Linux a bit 5 years ago in school. But I don’t think that counts.
Steam has many games but odds are most new games are windows and maybe mac only. None of activision’s games have official ports and are run using WINE through the use of Lutris or some equivalent. In the past this worked ok but after a fresh install of Kubuntu 22.04, Lutris scripts do not properly install activision games like starcraft II. i.e the Lutris install script for battle.net does nothing (no files are installed, Lutris just stalls indefinitely) and the starcraft II install script just prompts you to install battle.net then goes into a loop.
It looks like it’s either a Kubuntu issue, or something has gone wrong on your end. I read your post so just tried installing it on Mint, and I had no problems.
I checked the Battle.net site first, but they only had Windows or mobile downloads, so I tried installing Lutris. I haven’t used Lutris yet, so I found a guide.
I searched the Lutris site for Starcraft II, and clicked the install button, then told my browser that Lutris could open the link. Lutris asked if it could install the Battle.net program, so I said yes and followed the instructions.
Once Battle.net was installed, I opened it, logged in, and searched for Starcraft II. I found the free version, and told it to install.
Once the download finished, I started the game, set up my character, and played the tutorial.
Other than downloading Battle.net through Lutris, the installation was the same as it would be on Windows
It was a fresh install. All I did is install lutris and attempt to install battlenet from lutris’ battlenet page. I also attempted the reported workaround for an issue others are having but that didnt do anything either. It used to work fine in earlier versions of Kubuntu but not this time. And apparently there are other people having issues with battlenet in particular not actually downloading the files it needs correctly due to a dns issue. But in my case, the attempted install doesnt even get that far and if you look in the fold it is supposed to be installing in, there is nothing there. Theres also no log output or anything that indicates it is doing anything.
What’s your opinion of the Steam Deck?
If I had money Id probably get one. Steam in general has been the best thing to happen to linux gaming ever
I use both Linux and Windows (Linux professionally, windows personally)
Got a buddy of mine that will wax on for hours about how windows is pointless and should have been replaced by Linux years ago. I’ll then go “Cool, so uh, did that game download yet? Lets play!” Then start up the game. Four hours later and he’s still trying to get the sound to work or make the graphics display while continuing his rant on how user friendly Linux is.
Like, Linux is great and all, but fuck me, it’s not user friendly.
Just how a significant portion of the community wants it. Nice and obtuse.
I used to also think gaming and Linux are not really that compatible, but Proton being built into steam makes it easy to run pretty much any game out of the box now.
It’s really a bit like what we used to do when we poked at autoexec.bat and whatnot when running DOS games back when dinosaurs roamed the land.
It’s not really complicated, you just have to prod here and there until it works (unless it just doesn’t because some kind of anti-consumer software lock just won’t play nice with Wine, although that’s becoming less common nowadays).
OTOH, things that aren’t Linux friendly… corporate accounting, an awful lot of dedicated software for niche industries… There’s no lack of things that are still complicated in Linux.
The problem though is that we are in 2023, a good 32 years after Linux came out. It shouldnt feel like you are in the DOS era. One of the problems that dawns on me is the real issue is a lack of consistency. Sometimes things work great, sometimes they dont. A lot of people arent having the same issues I and many others do which is frustrating because of how the community reacts when someone brings up those inconsistencies. There are a lot of people that dont run into them for one reason or another and all they see is people bitching about from their POV, seemingly nonexistent problems.
You also have to remember that you’re running software designed for an entirely different operating system. It’s not at all like moving from xp to Windows 10. We’re not comparing apples to oranges, but apples to hedgehogs.
That it works most of the time is a fucking miracle in itself.
Yes it is a miracle that it ever works. HOWEVER it doesnt really matter to most people why it doesn’t work sometimes. It isn’t fair but the reality is that as far as most people are concerned, their PC is basically a microwave in that they have little interest in how the internals work as long as they work and if they can’t do x or y, they dont really care that it isn’t Linux’s fault. All they see is that they installed this new OS that looks really cool but cant run certain games or run certain software. Now if Linux were popular, it wouldnt be an issue because almost everything would have been written for one distro or another (like android is dominant on phones) but it isn’t. Steam is doing a lot to change things and hopefully Linux is better supported by other companies as well in the future but right now there are still enough gaps that I would be very hesitant about recommending Linux to a heavy gamer unless I knew that they basically waded in the steam ecosystem and the vast majority of their games could be run via proton.
You’re saying that as if Windows “just worked”.
The time I spend fixing the Windows machines of the people around me seems to indicate that it’s not the case.
Back when I used windows regularly instead of sparingly, I cant remember a time when I ever had to go into the registry files or command prompt to fix anything. You might have to install newer drivers or something but effectively do surgery on the dll files etc? Nope. And you have to remember that the average windows user is… not very skilled with computers. Theyre going to need hand holding a lot more than the average Linux user. Which is why windows is more or less designed for the lowest common denominator. And itd be weird if all the effort spent writing stuff primarily for windows didn’t result in an easier experience.
It used to be that the community acknowledged the harm Windows’ dominance caused Linux. Microsoft didnt change. They still leverage their monopoly to harm Linux.
Tbf you have to fiddle about with the game’s graphics settings anyways. I think lots of pc gamers are fine with having to fiddle with things. Heck seems like everyone wo ever bought a steam deck does nothing but fiddle with it. For some that is actually the most fun thing about it all.
Doing what you need to do to fix compatibility issues is in no way comparable to changing graphics settings.
There are also a number of compatibility issues on Windows itself thanks to the mess of DirectX workarounds they need to add to the drivers with each new game.
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I’d love to have a girl, or anyone for that matter ask me that. Though preferably not with the phrase “what the fuck” in front of it. I’d rather them ask me about it out of pure curiosity rather then out of distain and annoyance.
This guy is spitting the facts
get yourself a girl who not only knows what it is but runs it with you :)
Stack overflow responses are going to get super spicy for a couple days
Marked as duplicate?
Everytime I scroll past something from this community my eyes bleed. Y’all wanna fuck windows users so bad
You can embed it:
I don’t think I can from kbin.
, right?Oh, I didn’t notice you were on Kbin. Sorry.
Should’ve been on Linux smh my head 😔
._.
(It’s just a joke it’s ok)
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Yes.
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It’s not a religion it’s just some damned software
Y’all are very serious for a meme community
Its not something that effect’s your every day live its just a book
Excuse me sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Motherboard and Server?
Is it true that The Man in the Middle was cast down from on high?
FYI, the creator of an original Arch-chan is RavioliMavioli: https://raviolimavioli.github.io/ . The pic above seems to be a derivative work.
Average CC-BY enjoyer
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⡴⡢⡶⠶⢢⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢰⢏⣺⢿⣿⣾⣹⣷⢡⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢾⣾⣟⠝⠀⠨⠉⢹⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣾⣻⡇⠘⠿⢾⢐⣶⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣱⣾⣷⣦⣠⡾⣃⡐⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⡀⣀⣀⣤⣤⣠⡟⢻⣿⣿⣏⠻⡿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⣠⡾⢿⡿⠿⠿⢿⣻⣿⡋⠉⡇⠀⣿⠛⠻⠿⢇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⣸⠋⠀⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⢷⠀⢰⣰⠃⡠⢔⠄⠀⠀⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⢻⡄⠀⠛⢆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢿⣿⣿⠞⠛⠉⠁⠉⠢⡀⠑⢀⠀⠀ ⠀⣷⢀⣶⢿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⡟⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠆⠀⠡⠀ ⠞⢁⡼⢯⣠⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀ ⠖⠋⠀⠀⢻⣿⣄⡀⠀⢀⣾⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢰⡴⠀⠧⠀⠘⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⡝⣻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣄⡀⠀⢔⡵⡟⡇⠀⠀⠱⠈⡄ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣾⣹⡯⠤⢄⣏⣀⡈⣹⡟⡩⢋⢼⡄⢹⠀⠀⠌⠀⠇ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡟⢾⣤⣀⢤⡯⠄⠉⠁⡇⠐⢔⠀⠻⣇⣷⠈⢆⠀⡂That’s a really solid website! Very professional looking, even though all that is offered is drawing anime girls, lol.
Can tell you’re that type of friends if you’re replying with anime reactions
UwU
nice username
When she gets onto Linux:
“Now we just need to get you onto Arch!”
I knew about Linux when I was 10, and Linux was only like 2 years old at the time. How does someone be online in any capacity these days and not know about Linux? Linux users are everywhere and they never stop talking about Linux!
Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour Linus Torvalds
God bless his kind soul
Git in my belleh
I heard the name Linux from Minecraft being available on “Windows, Mac, & Linux” when I was maybe 12-13 (2014-15), but I never looked into it, and all I thought of it was it was some kind of really obscure operating system. I wondered why I’d never seen a Linux computer in tech stores. And Windows seemed perfectly fine, so why would I need to use it? “It probably has some crazy UI that nobody can understand”(except I didn’t know what ‘UI’ was at that age)
That’s back than… I’ve been using Linux as my daily driver now since mid 2021, and I’ve been on Manjaro for nearly 1 & a half years.
However, I’ve met barely anyone who even knows what “a Linux” is. I’ve met a guy who was only using Kali Linux because he wanted to hack or something; and a friend at my church who manages a lot of the technology and computers: him and his father tried using Ubuntu about 10 years ago when he was a late teen. Than there’s another guy at my church who, despite never having used Linux in his life; surprisingly new a lot about it and was able to help me solve a display issue I was having earlier this year. I’ve nearly gotten my Mum onto Linux Mint for her laptop 😂, because she really only makes documents, browses websites, and checks emails, and really doesn’t need to be paying for Windows & having updates forced on her regularly. As a matter of fact, I’m downloading it for her as I type.
The thing about not seeing them in stores is definitely a disconnect between our ages lol.
I remember seeing Debian and Red Hat retail boxes being sold at Sears and Myrvin’s and even Target growing up. Not so anymore. Haha
That’s really surprising to hear! I live in Australia and that may not have been available in stores here even back than… but maybe. Target is actually still around in Australia and a popular store.
We’ve got Linux and eggs, eggs sausage Linux and ham, Linux Linux sausage and eggs, toast juice Linux and ham…
“But… I don’t like Linux!”
“DON’T LIKE LINUX?!”
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F
to pay respects
So can I play Microsoft Flight Sim on a 5120x1444 ultra wide or is that asking too much?
stop calling people pathetic because youre more educated… especially women
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=D8cvgQJFDeo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
oh my god msgk linux
I’m currently on some pirated LTSC Windows 10 but I’ll probably move back to Linux next. It just bothers me how much more effort simple tasks take on Linux, and how a lot of the options emulate the inferior Mac look. Whenever I see the red yellow green buttons on a window it makes me gag thinking about all the money that terrible company has scammed people for.
Why worry about the fact that there’s lots of options that emulate the Mac look, when there are many options that don’t? My favourite Desktop Environment currently is KDE Plasma, which I use on Manjaro. It’s more like the Windows design but in my opinion way better, and of course ridiculously customisable (which is what KDE Plasma is known for, especially compared to Windows 10/11). Also the exit, minimize, and maximize buttons I for some reason absolutely love so much better than anything else I’ve seen (no, they look nothing like Mac). My other favourites are Budgie, Cinnamon, and Mate which are all great options. Budgie’s great for the minimalistic design while still looking very modern and clean. And besides, which DE’s are you talking about when you say they are emulating Mac? Most, if not all of them allow you change the “Red, Yellow, Green” buttons to the more traditional Windows look, and move them to the right side of the Window from the left.
Well that’s nice but I was just voicing my personal gripes with the Mac interfaces which are on some of the mainstream Linux versions. I didn’t say they were all bad, it just takes me personally more time to pick the correct ones. I’d hate to select an ultra specific customized version that gets abandoned by the maintainers in a year or two, I generally run machines for about 8 years.
I’d hate to select an ultra specific customized version that gets abandoned by the maintainers in a year or two, I generally run machines for about 8 years.
TLDR (Apologies for the crazy long comment): Basically, I say that if you want peace of mind the project isn’t going to be abandoned; choose one of the most popular distro’s and one of the most popular DE’s. And I reccomend a bunch of options for Distro’s and DE’s you might like to use.
That makes sense. If you want the peace of mind that the distro or Desktop Environment isn’t going to be abandoned in a couple of years; that’s why you go with one of the popular ones; they aren’t going away any time soon or the foreseeable future. The distro developers usually customise the included Desktop Environment a bit to cater to their specific audience. Choose a popular distro, and choose one of the officially maintained flavours they make available, rather then a community maintained one, which is much more likely to be abandoned after a couple years. Here’s an example of the popular desktop environments:
KDE Plasma has been around since 1998 & developed since 1996, and is regularly developed, improved, and updated.
Cinnamon has been around since 2011 and is developed by the Linux Mint distro developers; Linux Mint being one of the top 3 most popular Linux distributions; not going away anytime soon. It’s also regularly updated too. And since Linux Mint are the devs; It’s the main, most supported flavour available for Linux Mint.
GNOME I’m not a fan of it personally. It’s been around since 1999, developed since 1997; GNOME is associated with Ubuntu and is one of, if not the most popular desktop environments available; of course this is also regularly updated too, and not going away anytime soon.
Mate (pronounced mah-tay) has been around since 2011; it was forked from an old version of GNOME due to the backlash GNOME was getting at the time for drastic changes they were making to their own DE; and made for people who preferred the GNOME 2 design. Again: regularly worked on and updated
Budgie released in 2014 and is developed by Solus distro developers. In my opinion, it’s absolutely beautiful with it’s minimalistic yet modern visual design, but I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone; still worth it to check out.
Why don’t you setup a Linux virtual machine on your Windows PC, install a bunch of different flavours of different distro’s, and try the different Desktop Environment’s out for yourself? You might surprise yourself and find one that you adore the look of. I know from experience that using the environments themselves is way different to simply looking at screenshots or watching video’s.
The best options for distro’s to try out imo are:
Linux Mint (Debian based; probably the best beginner friendly distro out there, just about everything is doable without the terminal)
Manjaro (Arch based; made to be an arch-like distro that’s a beginner-to-linux but familiar-with-computers, and average-user friendly distro. A common misconception is that it’s very unstable and prone to breakage: this is not true anymore and was more an issue in it’s early days)
Pop!_OS (Debian based; brilliant for gamers and average computer users; they use GNOME, but System76 (the devs) are working on their own Desktop Environment written from scratch to replace GNOME; last I checked, there haven’t been any screenshots revealed of it.
Those are my top picks but I know my small list is missing many others of the great and popular distro’s. Making sure you can have a system that’s supported for years to come is easy if you pick one of the popular distro’s. If you don’t want to update the system for years at a time; don’t choose a distro with a rolling-release update system (like Arch, Manjaro, Garuda, EndeavourOS etc. which is basically anything Arch-based) If that’s how you use your system; Linux Mint with the Cinnamon, Mate, or XFCE flavour is a perfect choice. And if you want to, you ARE able to install any other DE on Linux Mint even if it’s not officially supported, and you can have as many DE’s installed at once as you want; though that will all require the terminal.
vannila os exist if you keep hopping distros
It just bothers me how much more effort simple tasks take on Linux
Such as? I’ve never had this problem.
It depends of what distribution and overall understanding the mentality being the how to install thing stuff. Most people don’t know what’s a package manager for example, how to manage multiple disks on the computer etc… While some linux distros are streamlined and made simple, they can feel quite different to windows.
You don’t just download an installer, go to the folder, click an icon with some associated details, and have warnings about the sort of modifications the program might make when installed. No, you have to learn the command line for this task and sometimes you need to know what parameters to set, and in the case of dependencies you should probably keep track of what all it comes with and what they do because when it comes time to remove a program it’ll be even more tedious. If it takes time then it is work, and Linux is more work.
I think most distros have a command to remove orphaned packages. If you just don’t want to use the command line but want a more App store like experience, then there are some distros that do have a GUI based app store. I think you should try dual booting with something like Pop_!OS when you want to try it. Absolutely do not install it in place of windows the first time, because you might not like it, and dual boot gives you an option to remove it and go back to windows like nothing happened. Then ofc if you don’t want to try it then don’t.
Oh god no, App stores are cancer. I just want files in folders. Easily identified formats like executables or media. I’m sure theres one right for me, but it’s not like it cost me anything to use the Windows LTSC.
Well, linux executables and 3rd party installers exist, but they are not the recommended way to install software, and linux uses the same formats as windows for almost everything(mp4, txt, rtf, etc…). But you should probably stick with windows if you want that UX.
