I prefer the UI of Shotcut, but kdenlive is admittedly more powerful. You can try both to see which one you prefer. I suggest you download the .appimage files of both of them from the website (this way you’ll get the latest versions). I’d suggest against the flatpak versions as sometimes they come with limitations of various kinds. Just download their respective .appimage files, make them executable (right click on the downloaded files with your file manager and then go to their Properties to set them as executable), and then double click them to load. If you go that route, make sure you manually update them every 3 months or so, as that’s when they usually release updates.

Windows apps (particularly ones that require that kind of acceleration) are unlikely to work with Wine. And if they do, either they’ll be crashy, or they can break at any consequent Wine update. Forget Windows apps. Windows games that are invoking only fullscreen 3D are much more likely to work on Linux because the part that gets re-interpreted is simpler. But apps, that use obscure optimization Windows APIs are a pain to get good support of.

So, I suggest you install kdenlive or Shotcut to do video editing. Even Davinci resolve is a hit or miss on Linux and it doesn’t support AAC at all. So get it done with the two OSS apps I suggested instead. In another life I was a music video director for local bands, and so I was doing a lot of color grading, invoking tricks and things that FOSS apps can’t do. I switched full time to Linux and FOSS apps, and I just do the basic color grading now. It was sad to see that part of the fun go, but that’s what I had to do.

Additionally Filmora is a primarily Chinese company, probably mining data, so it’s best to not use it. Same for CapCut.

These are just dependencies for your packages. However, Arch doesn’t automatically clean the downloaded files after installation so that ends up taking space. On my Dell laptop that has only a 64 GB eMMC, the installation package files took and whopping 5 GB of space, sitting there doing nothing. I nuked them (it didn’t remove the installed apps and libs, only the already used package files). Run: sudo pacman -Scc

If this happens to Windows as well, it’s unlikely that it’s Fedora’s fault. Something else is at play.

That is a too old of a laptop. In reality, modern Linux distros run well in anything newer than 10-15 years. Yes, there are distros that you can install into it, but they won’t be the latest and greatest distros of today. They’d be instead distros made specifically for old computers, and these distros are usually more complex because they lack all the gui tools found on newer distros.

First you need to find out if your CPU is 32bit or 64 bit, and if it can take a minimum of 2 GB of RAM (if yes, upgrade it too). Then, I’d suggest you download the right file from here: https://www.q4os.org/downloads1.html I find Q4OS to be the best for old computers (more gui tools), but you’d need that minimum of 2 GB of ram to load a browser and be comfortable with 3-5 tabs (no more than that though or you’ll hit the swap). Also, consider Falkon or Chromium as a browser, they use less ram than firefox (people have downvoted me for saying that in the past, but it’s my experience).

Personally, I’d get a used laptop for $150 from the last 10 years, and install Linux on that. It should be way faster than your Asus laptop. Just make sure it has 8 GB of RAM to be comfortable with modern Linux distros (Linux Mint can work adequately with 4 GB of RAM, unless you want to do video editing).

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

Not greatly. The games that have anti-cheat won’t work on Linux. Anti-cheat is a security problem anyway (because they circumvent the kernel policies) and so linux will never support these.

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

for the ones that work yes. There’s a list of how well games work on linux, there’s a website for that.

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

For some “difficult” non-anti-cheat games there are some workarounds. If we’re talking about apps and not games, then it’s best to use the Linux equivalents, and forget the Windows ones.

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

While there’s WINE and .NET for Linux, Windows apps don’t really work well. They usually break on new wine versions, or they don’t work at all. For apps, use Linux native apps. Games generally work better than apps because they don’t use too many of the Windows APIs (they’re mostly 3D stuff, and not app apis).

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

It depends on the distro. Some distros have graphical front ends, some you have to use the terminal to update the OS.

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?

There’s ClamAV, and also you should be turning the firewall On (some distros come with it, others you have to install it manually). Don’t downloads random binary packages, only from the distro itself, or official packages.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Overall, yeah… but it does depend on the version of the driver, distro you’re using, hardware etc. I use Intel graphics cards (dedicated) because I find their drivers to be more mature than nvidia’s, for example.

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

Very unlikely, near zero.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Everyone is recommended to start with Linux Mint, because it’s the distro with the most GUI front-end tools to do stuff. Yes, there are some distros that are more game-oriented, but they expect the user to know what they’re doing. Start with Mint.

I use Debian-Testing. It’s very stable, more so than most other distros IMHO (despite being -testing), and it has the latest packages.

You need to start with Linux mint. The errors you are mentioning are common in ubuntu, crashes happen and popup all the time on my ubuntu installations too. But never on Mint. Mint is based on the stable version of ubuntu, that it has long term support and it’s regularly getting updates to make it even more stable and secure. So please start with Mint, or Debian 12 (although Mint is better for new users).

Any BT adapter I’ve tried has worked with Linux, to be honest. The only problematic ones are some old ones from Broadcomm for the Mac.

I got an X280 with 8 GB of RAM a few months ago, works great with Linux. Paid just $175. It even works with Haiku OS! Pic: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/731/895/755/005/386/original/1b09c5a0d636d9a5.jpg

Just use Linux Mint, cinnamon edition, and then edit the startup app list to not load some of the stuff that take too much ram, like the reports, nvidia, etc. Also remove fwupd if you updated your laptop’s firmware already via windows. I personally also stop bt (frees overall 30 mb of ram). Make sure during installation that you create a 4 GB swap partition too. At the end, I have a system that starts up at 750 MB of RAM (htop reading, 980 MB with gnome-system-monitor). As long as I use only 2-3 Chrome tabs, I’m ok to not swap. Firefox uses more ram i’m afraid, especially with youtube.

I have 4 laptops here run linux mint with 4 gb of ram. They run fine, my husband even does development in one of these.

The n3060 cpu is slow at 660 PassMark points, just enough for Mint to function. XFce is a tad faster indeed, and uses about 60 MB less RAM, however, it’s missing some desktop options that I find useful (e.g. disabling tap and drag).

I find the looks of Cinnamon just fine with a bit of optimization, eg… using the new theme and using cinnamenu instead of the default menu. Here’s mine: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/537/970/191/106/160/original/2bfb19edd50e248f.jpg What i like from mint is that it’s clean looking.

As a first linux I’d suggest Mint, not suse or anything else. I’m a debian-testing user myself (rolling release), but for new users, use mint. All the problems you mention don’t happen on mint.

I personally buy refurbished. Lately I got a Lenovo X280 thinkpad, for $160 with 8 GB of RAM, 1080p screen. Worked fine, Linux flies on it.

I do too (endeavour os), but I prefer Mint. It just works, and it doesn’t break as easily. All my laptops are mint, all my desktops are debian-testing (the most stable rolling release around), and I have one laptop where I play around with other distros for fun.

If you use Linux Mint, it has its own redshift implementation in the new release 22.1.

I bought an A-series Intel card (A310, bought for $110), and I’m very happy with it. Very good drivers that work perfectly with Wayland, and its recent OpenCL drivers now work with Blender and DaVinci Resolve too (despite Resolve saying that it only works with nvidia or amd, the new drivers make the dedicated intel cards work too). Gaming is not too bad either, but I don’t game much.

I like it, but the microphone doesn’t work. They were supposed to make it work last summer, but the work hasn’t began for it yet. Without it, I can’t do calls to my mom, so I don’t use it anymore.

I don’t game much, so it’s smart. As long as I have the color I want (I used to shoot music videos for bands, so I’m into filmmaking), and enough ports, the only other thing that I need is to not scale. I don’t need too much refresh rate, I don’t need hdr, I don’t need ethernet, I don’t need webcams etc etc.

What you’re asking is very difficult due to resources, creating new bugs etc. The reality is, go with true and trusted hardware. Linux can not possibly support every new shiny thing. That’s Windows’ job, because that’s where the drivers are made for. And since it’s difficult to install Linux drivers manually for most users, manufacturers don’t bother with Linux at all. Especially, since Linus doesn’t care about compatibility with older kernels as much as Windows does. Either support is in the kernel, or you’ll experience problems.

Personally, all my laptops and PCs are more than 4 years old, for that reason. I often buy refurbished too. I write this in a refurbished Macbook Air from 2015, where I nuked MacOSX to run Linux Mint (with a binary broadcom wifi binary which is thankfully well supported by ubuntu). On my main PC, the only new thing I bought was an Intel gfx A- card, a 2 years old card, but I knew it had support before I bought it.

And even then, if it’s some weird thing, e.g. some over-complicated sound capture device, gaming mouse with a thousand buttons, etc etc (in other words, non-standard hardware), don’t expect great support for it, even if the years are passed. Stay with vanilla hardware to be compatible. If you had bought a 60 Hz 4k monitor, you wouldn’t have had problems and you would have saved money. Personally, the only feature I look in monitors these days (apart from good color and enough ports), is that they are 32" instead of the usual 27", so that I don’t have to use scaling (which creates yet another problem with Linux). I use 4k in its 100% resolution, fitting lots of windows in it, and not destroying my eyes because they’re well visible.