Since it’s ELI5, I’ll try to be as clear as possible. Windows and Linux distros are different operating systems, so their programs are their own. If there isn’t a compatibility layer present (or an emulator) you won’t be able run a program written for the other system. What Steam does on Linux is, it uses a compatibility layer (Proton) to run Windows games. Proton is Valve’s version of WINE with some specific improvements, mostly targeting Steam games. That’s how Steam Deck works. You can think the other way around of this is Microsoft’s WSL (not exactly).

So, because of there needs to be a compatibility layer, it might not always work as intended for some games (though numbers are decreasing with every update). Most of these games are games that use an anti-cheat, though Valve included Linux versions of BattlEye and EasyAntiCheat in Proton, and if a developer uses it, there is no problem for that game. For example, Hell Let Loose works fine because of this. Note that, some games will use kernel level anti-cheat (or currently using), those games won’t run at all.

From what I found, there is also a possibility that you might have a hard time with some older games that use a custom-built engine. I mostly encountered this with some Japanese games. Though, those games usually don’t work on something over Windows 7 too.

No problem!

Despite having strong protection according to these results, I always get unique fingerprinting from them. Which is scary.

Edit: Now I tried Tor on my desktop and got:

Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors tested in the past 45 days, only one in 628.7 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 9.3 bits of identifying information.

No problem! There are actually a lot of good paid software for Linux too but most people don’t know about them. Mostly targeted businesses but that’s fine I think.

This one has a perpetual license option, which could be steep for personal use but could be fine for a business. PDFsam Visual is great for what it does. You can also try it for 14 days too and then decide if it’s useful for you or not.

It’s a design thing. BIOS can know NVMe disks’ location because they’re directly mounted to PCIe. SATA isn’t like this. Similar logic with the RAM slots.

Always lsblk before dd. The order of /sdX might change from boot to boot. Only /nvme doesn’t change.

Reddit still comes up on search engine results, so many people still visit Reddit one way or another. However, you can use LibRedirect extension for this. Once you set a working frontend for Reddit, you can visit anonymously.

I approached this as they are more techie than a regular user, so they can learn Linux faster if they want. Otherwise, it’s their job and they are not a regular user. It’s the same for MS Office too. If it’s related to someone else’s job, it’s most likely irreplaceable. However MS Office is not a must for people who just want to write or do some spreadsheet.

Basically I exclude jobs from “everyday users”.

Well, it’s true that Photoshop has no real competitor, at least in the FOSS world. Otherwise we wouldn’t have this conversation. :)

I mean, I get MS Office part but do normal people use Adobe stuff (aside from Acrobat)? As I see, normal people don’t even know how to use Photoshop. The ones who can use Adobe products can use Linux as well without a hassle in my opinion. However, a change requires to relearn things. Probably that’s the reason people don’t seek a change, unless they feel a little adventurous.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Hopefully, Microsoft will break that cycle.

I prefer that over NT or Windows.

I guess I’m gonna say Linux Mint here too, even better LMDE.

Aww, too bad it’s actually fake. It was interesting yet funny. Though me remembering that goes a couple years back. It seems it’s been around for some time, probably a meme then.

Thanks for the link by the way. ^^

It’s really fine if they have no access to internet. They probably have their software that works fine with it, and probably won’t work on newer OSes. There is an airport that still uses Win 3.1 on some computers, don’t recall the name though.

Funny thing is, XP still appears on Windows market share.

While people don’t want to move onto Windows 11, I recently saw a fricking Vista on a local office supply store.

So, it acts like a hand tool from pdf readers?

systemd always requires root password for poweroff and reboot commands and polkit does that for you normally when using GUI. However that problem occurs when polkit timeout runs out. I don’t know the exact mechanism behind it so I cannot tell exactly when it happens. When it doesn’t do that, those commands don’t run via a GUI. So this is on part systemd and part the distro.

Hehe, it was fun to watch. It baffles me that Ubuntu still has those errors though.

It actually doesn’t crash, it just cannot show the requirement of the root password in a dialog. I think this can be fixed via lengthen the timeout of polkit. Though I can understand why most distros don’t change the default time because of security reasons. It would be nice if they give an option for it, at least for personal use cases. However, completely removing that timeout would be a security problem, even if the only user is you.