Be careful dual booting off a single partitioned drive ive heard windows likes to fuck with linux installs boot files overwriting them on win updates. Might just be best to put linux and its games on #3
Okay i see what your saying. but im an arch user and often use distro specific tutorials from other distros to troubleshoot issues. After a little while youll just subconsiously translate what theyre telling you to do in your distro specificly.
Also resources like reddit and stack overflow are great for you to reach out and get a better understanding. But if youve ever been hit with the "did you read the wiki?" or "they just link a wiki page" I can understand how frustrating it can be. Many linux users are pompus dicks who thinks every user should be a power user. My recommendation is still to reach out for help, ive had great success with the manjaro forum aswell.
they mention genz specifically but boomers and millenials are falling down the same path expecting software to just download and work, Because of the google/apple/microsoft/sony/nintendo ecosystems we are so used to. But even in these ecosystems learning to troubleshoot is paramount so I expect to see younger people entering the linux sphere in droves.
You definitely are a minority though, most people dont care for this stuff at all. Most will simply give up instead of doing more research and trying different tactics to repair software and hardware.
If you are set on using arch i highly recommend using archinstall or fedora and using the kde plasma or gnome desktop enviorment there are no files to configure and shit just works the desktop is also highly configurable. The only time youd be messing with cfg files would be if you are ricing your system to look like something out of r/unixporn which looks sweet but those people put ALOT of time and effort into it, and their desktop enviorments arent really meant for the average user.
But thats what im saying even a middle ground user would never need to compile from source. Anything youd want to do automatically can generally be done from a script and many things you can think of automation wise has allready been made into a script in bash or python.
Just recently i needed to remove all of the foriegn titles from a list of roms i have on my pc. i found a python script on github dropped it into malwarebytes (because i didnt feel like looking at code, many windows users do this too) and ran the script. I can code but my skills are script kitty chatgpt level. Im essentially the user you are describing
Ive tried this and proton seems to overwrite the games data everytime i launch the game breaking it and forcing a reinstall. I found that the best way is to simply have a drive formated to ext4 or ntfs mount it in both linix and windows and have seperate folders for linux games and windows games. Kinda jank but it works
All linux distrobutions are essentially just linux with prepackaged apps. all apps built for one distro can be run on another. So in essence there is no difference besides the installation process, gui, and package manager. (Probably going to get flamed for this because this is kind of a half truth but for most users this is how id describe it, For ease of understanding)
Ive said it before in this comment section but i highly recommend dual booting its a bit of setup if you want it to be smooth with grub but the freedom and compatability is unmatched by any one distro or windows version. With the added benafit of not destroying your probably gaming tweaked windows install
Sadly anticheat and proprietary software are definitely a huge hurdle that linux is yet to overcome. I highly recomend dual booting off a second drive to dip your toes in again. Many FREE alternative software like davinci exists but if youre already accustomed to a certain program i can definitely understand the reluctance to switch.
Also its quite a pain in the butt to set up but if your still iffy on making the full switch to linux, "dualboot"! Purchase a second cheap ssd and install linux to that drive configure a software called grub to list windows and linux on start up and then launch into your prefered os. For me this was the best since alot of anticheat games I play are still locked down to windows
Simple in most distros. For me i can legit just go to my gui package manager type nvidia click install. My package manager detects that nvidia-utils and nvidia-settings are required/optional and prompts me to install those aswell. Done. For info on your specific distro lmk ill find it for you
Gui package managers are great for simple click and install usage similar to windows. but i prefer these since the list of apps is modderated by the repository you choose. So no more googling for a program and downloading a virus because of the 10 fake links google provides to your download. So imo its even safer for users like your mom looking for software is alot less risky.
By default many games will use steam runtime for linux compatability which just doesnt work. Gotta go to steam settings>compatability> and switch to the later versions of proton (proton is just a translation layer that converts some code of the game to linux compatible code) sadly many games with anticheat are not playable. Check the sites protondb or areweanticheatyet for info if your game is compatible
Linux definitely has a learning curve but its night and day when you actually own your device and get to decide on what software is allowed to run on your computer.
On top of the privacy, the speed of most linux distros is a huge step up from windows. Windows imo is gradually becoming obsolete in the gaming sphere. the amount of work required to properly configure and debloat a system for gaming was zero in my distro. Install gfx driver, gamemode, steam, proton GE, GOverlay, done. I play popular games such as marvel rivals and warframe at decent framerates. (my system is older).
With windows there was so much nonsense to disable that would hugely impact FPS. Sometimes disabling these things would break other features of the OS. And most of the debloat scripts to automate the process are rife with viruses and issues.
Im convinced that by enshitifying the OS it will fool users into thinking their hardware is obsolete and "cant keep up" but im running a 1070ti and a i7 from like 2018 and its still a decent system that does everything i need. until something breaks im not upgrading.
Be careful dual booting off a single partitioned drive ive heard windows likes to fuck with linux installs boot files overwriting them on win updates. Might just be best to put linux and its games on #3