This is why I use email aliases.

My credit card works just fine 🤷

Just to give credit where it’s due.

They just keep implementing features from Graphene OS without ever mentioning them.

Cheaper? Yes. Better? No. Recent years have yielded massive advancements in many areas but very specifically, efficiency, meaning less noise, more power and better battery life. That’s fine if those things aren’t important to you.

You’re just imagining a bunch of shit no one said.

Same. Bazzite was the first distro I used that had a great “out of the box” experience, with fractional scaling, gear lever, gamescope, caffeine, tiling shell, seamless background updates, etc.

Cool to see them grow beyond their initial notariety as a handheld distro and into one of the top recommended distros for beginners.

The new framework 12 starts at $700. Cheaper if you BYO RAM and storage.

It says they’ve been offering this since 2020

I see most are covered but I have a couple more:

Fedora Magazine

It’s FOSS

Bazzite

I really don’t understand how you can say things like that when Nvidia-specific problems are regularly reported. Just because you don’t personally have problems, doesn’t mean lots of other people don’t. Having dealt with it personally, I can confirm it’s absolutely a problem on some machines. Especially older ones.

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

If you play competitive multiplayer online games, yes. Otherwise, no.

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

Depends on how you mod games. But probably yes. The NexusMods app is newly available for Linux but with very minimal support at this point.

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

It depends. Sometimes you can run them through WINE/Bottles. The main place you may run into problems is in peripherals.

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

Through WINE/Proton, yes.

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

Depends on your distro. I use Bazzite and updates take place seamlessly in the background so you don’t need to do anything.

How does digital security work on Linux?

Kind of a vague question. Keep in mind pretty much every server on the planet runs Linux, including incredibly sensitive ones.

Is it more vulnerable due to being open source?

Quite the opposite.

Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?

Every modern OS has antivirus built in, and third party solutions should be avoided like the plague.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

As long as you’re not using Nvidia.

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

Not anymore than any other OS can.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

That is an eternal argument in the space. There are 2 recommendations that come up most often for beginners: Linux Mint and Pop!_OS. Although I don’t like either of those visually, so I can heartily recommend Bazzite for beginners. I won’t go into too many details as to why but it comes with lots of goodies and configurations “out of the box” that enhance and simplify the experience, especially for gamers.

What is?

Is there more than 1?

Man I’ve been using Droidify for a long time 😅

I’m not shocked, they’re all terrible. The only thing that shocks me is that they keep trying year after year.

You and I both fell into that trap because no one else seems to care and the fanboys will even deny the bloatware exists.

How will they detect “VPN traffic”?

Many admins say it is a lot of work and they put a lot of effort, money and energy in it. Some even close their instance after few years, because it is just too much.

I would say you should limit the number of active accounts. Probably to a few hundred at most in the beginning. Close registration when things start to become too much. Re-evaluate periodically and re-open as necessary/desired. There’s no reason you have to allow thousands of people on your instance.

“Most people” do not play video games at all.