School me on LINUX

[Hoosierdood]

Ive heard a lot of people lately talking about Linux OS. Just wondering if it really is as good as people claim. I absolutely hate Microsoft and refuse to volunteer any info to them until they prove that my info is secure. I even set up my computer to not be connected to a Microsoft account. But I hate Apple even more with their overpriced and proprietary products. So here are a couple questions.

1. What makes Linux so good?
2. Can Linux get viruses?
3. Would I constantly be running into compatibility problems installing programs?
4. How does it handle moderate gaming?

My system is a 1 year old ASUS laptop with Core i5 6200 and 12 gb RAM. I do moderate gaming, but nothing with crazy graphics. Surf the web, social media, and of course INGO. Would Linux be right for me?

 

[oldpink]

As a Linux (currently using Slackware 64-bit version 14.2) user for the last 20+ years interrupted, I believe I can give you some answers.
In order:

1) As an open source (Windows and MacOS are closed source) a major advantage is that is supported by a team effort assisted by hundreds to thousands of people constantly debugging and correcting it, with aid from end users submitting bug reports for rapid resolution, quite different from the laborious process of commercial operating systems.
It also can be made more secure than either of the big two closed source counterparts.
Your options to tailor the interface to your liking, all the way down to the window manager and even the text only command line, are extensive.
The most current native file system (EXT4) is excellent and has some significant advantages over NTFS, the Windows file system.
You can make the operating system as fat or as lean as you like.

2) Yes, Linux can certainly get viruses, but there are so few that have been made for it, considerably fewer than even MacOS viruses and not even in the same universe as those written for Windows.
The reasons for this are partially due to the inherent granularity of Linux security, but mainly due to the old Willy Sutton rationale, paraphrased as "Windows is where the computers are."
It's largely a simple case of the smaller numbers of Linux systems making it less worthwhile for the virus writers to go the trouble of either porting their existing viruses to it or learning from scratch to write for it and circumvent its security.

3) As far as compatibility goes, as long as you install the needed libraries (binary files required as prerequisites for whatever program you're installing) and using a program is compiled for either 32-bit or 64-bit Linux, or (this only works for 32-bit running on 64-bit Linux, not the other way around) if you have the necessary 32-bit libraries to allow a 32-bit program to run on your 64-bit system, you should be okay.

4) One of the big complaints about Linux is the dearth of games compiled to run on it, with the likes of Quake I/I/III/??? able to run on it, plus a few others.
I personally have QuakeII on mine that I only occasionally (maybe once or twice a year) play for a while, but I'm really not a gamer, so it's not really an issue.

Your system would be more than enough for your purposes, but be sure to install a 64-bit Linux variant that will be able to see all 12GB of RAM.
Also, I wanted to bring up a nice option for you to allay any fears of taking the plunge entirely by completely obliterating your existing OS (Windows, I assume), resolved by setting up a dual boot system that will allow you to boot either Linux or your existing OS selectively.
I have my system set up this way, with Linux set up as the default, but it's still nice having the disliked Windows 10 available for the rare occasion when I need to do something there.
As far as web surfing, you have plenty of options in Linux, with the more popular ones being Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Seamonkey, and Opera (I have all four, plus Chromium, PaleMoon, and Midori), but there are at least a dozen others that have varying features should you prefer those.
There are also plenty of e-mail programs, some better than others, but the most likely to make you happy will probably be Thunderbird.
As for word processing, probably the best option is LibreOffice, which can write documents in its own native format or even in the formats used for Microsoft Office and several other commercial office suites.
I do all my web surfing, most of my document writing, and all of my e-mail via Linux.
It's a rare day that I ever boot into Windows.
Just don't be easily daunted by the big change the firs go round and allow yourself to get accliminated; and you'll probably wind up loving it.

 

[wtburnette]

I think oldpink does a great job of answering your questions. What I want to offer is that it's very easy to try out Linux, should you have a desire to. There are numerous distributions, so the first thing you have to do is pick one to try out. I recommend Linux Mint for new Linux users because it's very easy to use: https://www.linuxmint.com. There are also some useful utilities that allow you to create a bootable USB drive to test drive the distro you want to try: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/linux-live-usb-creator/. I use the linked utility and it does a good job of creating a drive you can boot up and use. If one doesn't work properly, try to recreate it, or choose another distro. Anyway, using this method, you could easily test a few distros to see what you like, without even changing anything on your system. If you find you like something, you can use the bootable environment to install the distro you like and if you don't find an alternative to Windows you prefer, at least you didn't change anything on your system and you can go back to using Windows without any hassle.

 

[wtburnette]

Oh and on gaming, here's an (older) article that has some info on gaming under linux:

Gaming on Linux: A guide for sane people with limited patience | PCWorld

There's probably more recent stuff you can look up, but this gives you an idea of some methods that work and what kind of a hassle it may be.

 

[PistolBob]

Currently you have at least 300 different distros of Linux out there to choose from...so if you don't like the one you have, just get another. They're free, for the most part.

 

[delwin]

You've already got good replies here but there are a couple of things I'd like to add.

There is a way to run _some_ Windows programs on linux using a utility called WINE. Results will vary wildly depending on what you're wanting to run, and often depending upon which version of WINE you're using. There is a website that keeps a database of what's working and how well it works with different versions of WINE, so you can at least research something before you try it or if you run into problems.

Another option to give linux a test drive is to download virtualbox (there are other options, as well) and install linux in a virtual environment on your windows system. This is a reasonably painless way to test drive various distributions without permanently altering anything.

The biggest source of potential hardware issues at this point is your video card. The drivers are fairly good...except when they aren't. I wish I could give you a quick answer about what will and won't work well, but the best advice I can really give you is to do your homework on whether or not your card will have issues. I've had good luck with nvidia and Intel cards, while AMD/ATI has historically been a headache. It has been a number of years since I last tried to run an AMD video card, so perhaps things are better on that front, but I won't be holding my breath.

As far as games go, there are now a fair number of games available on Stream which run on linux now. Last I heard, it was more than 3000. Quite a few older games will also run under WINE.

I've been using linux for close to 20 years now, almost exclusively. Windows makes my teeth hurt. it's almost gotten downright boring these days. It's been (many) years since I've had to compile a kernel or even dig into a config file, barring a couple of oddball things I experiment with from time to time. If you're not attached at the hip to MS Office, Quicken, or Acrobat (for editing pdfs, not reading), odds are good that linux will do what you need to do on a day to day basis and will be worth checking out.

 

[Hoosierdood]

Thanks everyone for the input. Think I might look into it a little more. Anything is better than Windows.