this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Basically the forced shift to the enshittified Windows 11 in october has me eyeing the fence a lot. But all I know about Linux is 1: it's a cantankerous beast that can smell your fear and lack of computer skills and 2: that's apparently not true any more? Making the change has slowly become a more real possibility for me, though I'm pretty much a fairly casual PC-user, I don't do much more than play games. So I wrote down some questions I had about Linux.

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

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

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

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

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

How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

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

And also, what distro might be best for me?

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[–] r00ty@kbin.life 3 points 17 hours ago

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

So this one I thought I'd answer because I've done development in both NET framework and NET core and how it works is different for each (although things will usually work one way or another).

For .NET framework applications, if the program is compiled for windows (the .exe) you can usually run it with mono (you generally don't need wine, but there's some caveats that mean sometimes you should use wine). This will include programs with GUIs. If the NET framework app calls other windows programs it is best to run it via wine, you will need to install the net framework within wine, but there's a winetricks command for that. There are a few things that are generally niche things that do not work in linux net framework's mono though. By niche the one I can think of, is serial port events. Very annoyingly they all exist, so the program will run but the events will never trigger an action in the programs. Very annoying, but luckily very rare/niche stuff.

For .NET core, you can build directly to linux targets, and if the project you are working on does target NET core, then you can run the binary natively (note: you usually cannot build applications using forms to linux native binaries, for these you should run the windows exe with wine). You can also run the .exe files for this with wine and I've rarely had a problem with it.

Note that if you develop .NET applications, you won't be able to build anything that uses the standard forms GUI under linux. There are other UI frameworks out there you can use that are multi platform. For this reason, for the projects that do use windows forms, I have a VM with windows on that I boot up for this reason.

In short, if you're just running windows binaries, you will be generally fine with mono for framework and wine for core. For development "it's complicated".