Nagato Yuki moment

Definitely ask your principal for a recommendation.

Dust can also block connections. I remember a 64 GB RAM system becoming 128 GB when it was cleaned (two sticks; one was clogged).

Mint also gets rid of Snaps.

Teh kidz r al rite.

Schools in India already use Ubuntu. To be fair we benefit from having some local manufacturing assembling. There’s usually no security beyond whatever linux offers by default.

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

Depends on the game. In general no, unless it has kernel anticheat, which Linux will not allow because that’s a glaring security risk.

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

Yes.

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

Most Windows software can be run on Linux using Wine. But there are advantages to using Linux-specific alternatives - they are often lighter and faster.

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

Yes, each distribution has its own update tool. They also install and update software (like in Android, where Google Play installs and updates all apps and not just the OS). No need to download exe files from random websites.

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?

Linux is generally much more secure than Windows, because it is open-source. Most internet servers and supercomputers use Linux partly because of its security.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Nvidia is notoriously bad but getting better. AMD is good.

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

No.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Linux Mint. It is stable, reasonably up to date and does not make confusing changes every update. It also tends to work on most systems.

Short answer: off

Long answer: If you won’t use your system for gaming (or anything requiring third-party drivers) and trust Microsoft to not fuck up and will also encrypt your disc, then Secure Boot makes you safer. Otherwise it just causes trouble.

Their laptops were running Windows / Linux, and this article is saying that while they initially planned to shift to HarmonyOS Next, they are now likely to stay with Linux.

Also, while HarmonyOS Next is proprietary, the kernel (Hongmeng, a microkernel optimised for arm64 and with a Linux compatibility layer) and large parts of the underlying code (OpenHarmony) are open-source. Sort of like Android and AOSP. The ‘optimised for arm64’ thing might be why they are sticking with Linux - the laptops mostly use Intel x86 chips.

Debian already has an ARM version. Do you mean some Qualcomm drivers are missing? There are already Ubuntu ROMs for Android phones, so this shouldn’t be an issue, right?

It messes up object arrangement. This is technically Microsoft’s fault, but that doesn’t help when you want to communicate clearly with a MS Office user.

LibreOffice has more features and is overall better. OnlyOffice is more compatible with MS Office. So if you need to use docx etc. for work, you use OnlyOffice as a workaround.

Counterpoint: ‘The Brooks’s Law analysis (and the resulting fear of large numbers in development groups) rests on a hidden assummption: that the communications structure of the project is necessarily a complete graph, that everybody talks to everybody else. But on open-source projects, the halo developers work on what are in effect separable parallel subtasks and interact with each other very little; code changes and bug reports stream through the core group, and only within that small core group do we pay the full Brooksian overhead.’

Source: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s05.html

The Linux kernel (the code) is open-source. Linux Foundation (the people who write said code) is headquartered in the US. The US can decide what Linux Foundation can and cannot do, who works there, etc. They can’t control who uses the code.

I’m guessing most IoT devices are made in China (or increasingly Southeast Asia), so yes.

Wouldn’t this violate the EU’s DMA?

Mint has three prebuilt options, Cinnamon is just the default. Beyond that you can also install other desktops.

I thought it was a Dragon Ball Z reference.

But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.

For the reasons you described, I won’t run VLC as root, and I don’t think 99% of users would need to. But if someone wanted to do it, the software shouldn’t stop them from doing it (beyond giving a warning and asking them to confirm).

Any distro that can run Chromium / Chrome. And everything other than Teams will work even on Firefox.