Linux is interesting to me, but I’ve never dipped my toes into it because it seems really intimidating (and a lot of loud people act pretty snobbish about it towards non-Linux users, making it seem even more intimidating to get into; I’d rather not be bullied for my choices in software or my ignorance in others).
It seems so complicated to me, and there’s so many types, and so much lingo that I’m not versed in, so that when I consider getting into it I just feel so overwhelmed I can’t even think.
My understanding of Linux is bare bones to say the least. I understand it’s highly customizable. I understand it’s a lot of manual work, though, at least… it sounds like it? From what I’ve seen people say, it seems like you need to remember a lot of codes and functions to do basic things unless you install interfaces for things? Again, I’m really ignorant about this stuff, so excuse my lack of proper terminolgy and such.
I also am under the impression that Linux isn’t the greatest for most games? Or at least, that’s what I heard a lot years ago, I don’t know if it’s still true (or if it was even true back then). If that’s still a thing, is it because Windows is just what everyone defaults to when designing software? How viable is gaming on Linux?
And how does one even… go about setting up Linux? How do you choose what er… version? Type? Ah, distro? Again this… terminology is foreign to me, I’m not fully sure what I’m saying. Would I have to whipe a laptop of Windows to install Linux on it? How would I do that?
I am fascinated by the concept of Linux but like I said, there’s just so much. I have ADHD and Autism and combined, the whole idea of jumping into this is so goddamn overwhelming to consider figuring it out all by myself.
Sorry if this is out of place, by the way.
ETA: Thanks for all the help so far everyone. I’m gonna start playing with various distros using an older laptop of mine. I bought it real cheap and used a few years ago and it has mainly just been used as my own personal tv that only plays Whose Line Is It Anyways? with Drew Carry every moment of every day, virtually nonstop… and the poor thing can do that on Linux just fine, too.
ETA2: After backing up the Whose Line episodes off the laptop, I tested out Ubuntu using virtual box on my regular laptop but it didn’t entice me much, so I searched for something else and found “Live Window Maker”, a uh, fork(? is that the right term?) of Debian and installed it onto the laptop. So far, successful! I havent explored it much since I finished my backup last night and installed the distro before I left for work, but I’m excited to start playing with it. I really enjoy the classic windows interface styling of this one, so I’m looking forward to playing with it.
Linux isn’t really like this anymore depending on the distro you install. I switched to linux around 2 years ago when windows 11 was announced, switched to Pop!_OS. My idea was to dualboot with windows 10 until I don’t need it anymore but messed up during the installation and eradicated windows. Best mistake of my life. I don’t do much heavy gaming, most of the games I play are native and the one’s that aren’t run perfectly with proton. Really, I never needed windows in the first place. I slowly learned to do stuff on the command line but most popular distros have graphic interfaces for installing software, updating, etc.
Very easy to use, other than since PopOS uses the gnome interface it doesnt have a similar workflow to windows, a bit more similar to mac, actually. Takes a while to get used to but I’ve lesrned to love it. You can also install other interfaces like KDE and cinnamon that look more like windows by default easily with 2 commands you can get from a youtube tutorial.