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

Not significantly as long as you are on the right distro for it.

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

no. mod managers can work but its definitely not as easy. If you use steam workshop it works great usually, but something like vortex is gonna be a pain in the ass.

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

You can run windows programs with wine. It’s not that difficult to do. Its how games work on Linux that dont have linux support.

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

Usually you can get it to work. I have run across some specific programs for my job that simply wont work with wine, but they barely work on windows as it is. It may need fiddling with tho.

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

Sometimes. It depends on the distro. Mint has an updater where you click update and ur done basically. Others you go in and do a terminal command which changes by package manager. For like OS version jumps if your not on a rolling release distro then it can be a bit of a bigger job. I recently updated my computer from Debian Bookworm to Debian Trixie. I went into the sources replaced bookworm with trixie, and ran the full upgrade command. Then rebooted and had to ctl alt f4 into terminal nuke gnome and reinstall that. Which is expected in that case. It can be a bit techy at times for something like that but for a normal update on a distro with a GUI updater its a button click. Usually no reboot needed either.

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?

Dont download shit you shouldnt download. If your not sure if something has a virus or not you can get tools to scan for them, but windows is similar in that your main protection is just not doing something dumb. You can keep regular backups and if somehow you mess something up or get a virus just restore from it. PikaBackup works well.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

AMD is flawless usually. Nvidia i dont use but hear it can be more of a hassle. With AMD the drivers will come preinstalled with your distro usually. Some do Nvidia too some dont. There is an open source and proprietary nvidia driver you have to pick which one you want. Id research it for your specific card.

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

No more than windows can. If you try to overclock without proper cooling or something for example. Thats BIOS stuff usually tho not an OS thing.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Maybe Nobara since you like gaming? Or Linux Mint its beginner friendly.

If what you want is like a start menu like experience that you can customize i think plasma and cinnamon would both give that to you from what i have seen. Take a look at my reply to my own comment btw i put a screenshot of the app grouping that does exist in gnome. You just group them up in the all apps menu.

Ok im at my computer now so i can look at this.

You can make categories like this if that works for you.

Sorry im a bit confused. Gnome does allow app grouping in little bubbles similar to on a phone. Do you mean in the activities menu i meant the applications menu extension. having custom categories? I basically never use that when i use gnome i just hit the super key or do a 3 finger swipe up twice on the trackpad to open the app menu. For desktop ive recently switched to gnome too and have been using the dash to panel extension so i can click the app menu button on it.

I run Debian Stable. I wanted something i could just set and forget. I don’t need updates, or want them outside security stuff. And i want stability. My machines pretty old so i dont need newer drivers or anything anyway. It also has all the software i need.

I asked ChatGPT about it since I’m not sure how to go about it, and got this. Might be worth a try.

Prompt: In a recent update to the fedora operating system they changed it so mobile broadband modems are now flagged as WWAN devices rather then ethernet devices. This is causing it to treat a usb tethered phone as a WWAN device instead of a ethernet over usb device, and the tether is not working as a result. How could a user fix this on their system?

Answer: You can teach ModemManager to completely ignore your phone’s RNDIS interface so that NetworkManager will handle it as a normal Ethernet link again. Here’s how:

1. Find your phone’s USB IDs
   Plug in your phone with USB‑tethering enabled and run:

   lsusb
   

   You’ll see a line like:

   Bus 002 Device 008: ID 18d1:4ee7 Google Inc. Nexus/Pixel (tethering)
   

   Note the idVendor (here 18d1) and idProduct (here 4ee7).

2. Create a udev rule to ignore it
   As root, create /etc/udev/rules.d/99-usb-tether-ignore.rules with these contents:

   # Tell ModemManager to ignore my phone’s USB‑tether interface
   ATTRS{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="4ee7", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"
   

   (Replace 18d1/4ee7 with your phone’s IDs.) citeturn5search4

3. Reload udev and restart services

   sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
   sudo udevadm trigger
   sudo systemctl restart ModemManager NetworkManager
   

After that, your tethered phone will no longer be treated as a WWAN modem but as an ordinary USB‑Ethernet device—DHCP will kick in and Internet will flow as before.

Tip:
If you never use a cellular modem on this machine, you can also just uninstall ModemManager entirely:

sudo dnf remove ModemManager
``` citeturn5search4

So its treating your phone like a WWAN device like if you had mobile broadband built into the computer instead of treating it like a ethernet over usb connection. If there is a network connection showing up for it try to go in and force it to allow the phone to handle DHCP. Tethered phones act as the DHCP server in most cases, but if it thinks its an internet WWAN device the computer might be trying to be the DHCP server causing a conflict. Or force it to somehow recognize it as an ethernet connection.

try to look up how to enable rndis in fedora manually and try it. Might work. Or you might need to download something too.

I’ve been working on a phone tethering router so might have some insight here for you. Android can use CDC or RNDIS to tether. It depends on your phone which ones gonna be used. Try to figure out which one its using (can do this by watching logs when plugging in usb usually itll say there which type of device is connecting). When i was doing the router i had to make sure cdc_ether and rndis_host kernel modules were both loaded to ensure compatibility. It might be as simple as manually loading a module in the new kernel version. Although I’m not exactly sure how it’ll work on fedora i was doing this all on OPNsense.

What i was doing was tethering the phone to a router (old thinkpad running router OS) then passing that connection on to its network and connecting to the Access Point on the network with my laptop. I still havent fully worked out the kinks yet but its going pretty well. Sorry i can’t be more specific for your case, but hopefully it gives you some terms you can use to google more effectively at the least.

It doesnt matter tbh. Even assuming they could entirely prevent non-US downloads it would take perhaps a few months before non-US alternatives were up and running. Its not like the entire worlds gonna go oh ok guess we wont have that stuff then. They’ll just host their own downloads. It probably wouldn’t even take that long. It might cause some short term chaos, but long term it wont do a thing.

This sounds like something a serial killer would say…

I remember reading about how cars in other countries like China, and Europe have LED headlights that will detect where other cars windshields are and turn the LEDs that would shine in that direction off re-actively. But that it was illegal in the US for some reason.

Piracy tools are a direct replacement for streaming services. Thats kind of the point of them. In fact they are better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

My MITM attack concerns mainly regard stingray use. Since ill be routing through cellular for everything.

Huh? Distrust the encryption? I never said i didnt trust my encryption. Im confused lol. Im looking to make sure my local network is secure. The VPN i have is fine for security on the internet.

I had asked Chat GPT about it and got some suggestions for my firewall settings, and about making sure the router management interface is not accessible remotely etc.

the BEEest password is the BEEee movie script with all the letter "B"s replaced with BEE BEEecause noBEEody expects it