Hello. I am windowshopping for my first PC (upgrading from shit laptops all my life) and have heard good things about linux. However, I know absolutely goddamned nothing about linux outside that 1: it has a learning cliff instead of a learning curve, and 2: is obscenely customizable once you get over said learning cliff
can someone give me a basic introduction? are there hand-holdy guides written by linux autists for this sort of thing?
i must doubly ask if linux is one of those operating systems that gets cucked over in general products and gaming spheres similar to macOS
Another vote for mint, mint is "Grandma can use it but her grandson can use it too" simple and versatile and not too alien if you've been locked to the microsoft "Ecosystem" for a decade.
The terminal is IMO damn near entirely optional as it has it's own built in updater and software repo with a GUI that works a treat if you're tech illiterate. But you may have to mess with the terminal at some point but it's at least good about things like sometimes if you fat finger a command by a letter it might pitch a list of potential ones so you can go "Oh that's it that's the one I meant"
That and timeshift is your friend, it's windows system restore but not dogshit. You can go out of your way to brick your install hard and as long as you have a timeshift backup you're good the super majority of the time and back up and running in 3-5 minutes tops, so don't feel afraid to fuck around within reason.
And always keep at least a couple backups of your last working kernal if you update that just in case something goes wrong or fucky or it breaks a compatibility.
The modern terminal is about on par as "Scary" as the basics for windows CMD and power shell imo. Which is not really at all, it is smart to get familiar with it.
Switching OS is basically trading out a decade of muscle memory some works for you some works against you and it'll take time to adapt.
So don't get frustrated and remember you're comparing years of familiarity VS day 1.
In fairness and transparency though- Mint/Cinnamon still uses "X11" and could potentially cause issues on mismatched multiple displays or if you have a fancy schmacy 4K TV for a monitor sometimes. Buddy of mine who's goofy enough to use two TVs instead of proper monitors has issues with refresh rates on his secondary but otherwise no other ones. Thought it was important to mention though and sometimes you can change a setting or command and get it humming again.
Just something to look out for if you have a hyper specific issue crop up.
Wayland is the newer one supported by I think catchy and bazzite (Which imo I don't give a shit about or like GAYMER distros) which handles fractional display scaling and multiple displays better. But Mint SHOULD be getting less janky non "Alpha" wayland support soon(tm) in the pipeline.
And as far as games specifically go, it's only really a problem if you play the most chinesium/EA type multiplayer stuff around and it's less the software or hardware these days and more "The dirt mouthed kernal level anticheat devs didn't flick the damn run-on-linux option on" as a problem, launching games with steam and proton handles 90 percent of everything and even works for added to library non steam games, Heroic Launcher and other stuff handles the remaining 9 percent with a 1 percent outlier of very few titles unless you will choke and die if you can't play marvel rivals/fortnite/league.
Also I don't use the feature myself but heroic launcher can also direct import some account libraries from epic and gog.
https://areweanticheatyet.com/
Is a good way to at a glance know if you're good or fucked outright if you do play some games like that so you know what is a no go. It's not that many at all though that absolutely just will not work at least.
Edit: And if you have a potato bug up your asshole about steam you can use Lutris as it lets you use whatever wine/proton you want without steam.
Also has a whole set of ez bake brownie batter type install scripts for non-linux stuff to simplify what would otherwise be a headache for things with launchers like old ass MMOs and such.
