Nugscree

With lasers! Shooting through the fiber optic cable, but still. LASERS!

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

That will depend on the games you play, and what platform you use. If you are using Steam, you can enable the proton layer have more access to games, but if the game in question uses any type of kernel level anti cheat chances are it's not going to work.

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

Depends on what you are used to, if you are using mod managers and which ones.

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

A lot of work has been done with WINE, games on Linux, and Proton. You'll need to do a little bit of reading to see if it can work on Linux, but the community can often be awesome and already have found a solution. There are also a lot of great alternatives to Windows/Mac only software you can try.

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

Depends on your distro but most can install .net, you'll need to do a bit of reading.

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

Yes, there are package managers that you can use to install and update software, some distro's even have a shop like interface.

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?

I've only ever had to use a virus scanner twice in my Linux journey and both of those times it was on a server. Because Linux is open source everybody can see what is going on in the code and this way bugs or security issues can be found and patched quicker.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Depends, if you are using AMD you should be fine, Nvidia has functioning drivers as well, I can't speak for Intel ARC support because I've never used it..

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

I've never broken my hardware, but I've broken my system a few times by ignoring the warnings the system gave me, always got it to work again.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

Linux Mint might be a good one, the Cinnamon is great for beginners, but there are many flavors you can choose from. Start with a live system which will not require you to install anything just yet, but you'll get a feeling for how everything works. After trying it out live you can decide if you would like to install it. But remember that when trying it live you are limited in what you can do.

Red Hat 8.0, the Linux Starter 2003 double cd edition. From there I tried my first Ubuntu when they where still sending out free cd's which was version 6.06 LTS. After that I dabbled a bit jumping from distro to distro to try out different flavors, tinkering a bit for fun and even tried to build my own with Arch. All the while keeping my Windows (XP, 7, 10) daily driver as my main rig. Finally switched over to Pop_OS! a few years ago as my daily for work. I've been thinking about switching over my gaming rig to a Linux distro but haven't figured out which one is the best one and requires the least amount of tinkering.

The Bic Cristal (number 7) all day long. They last forever, are dirt cheap and are the best selling pen in the world.

It's not a weird myth, have you ever worked with average users? Some of them have trouble opening a PDF or don't know how to import a CVS file in Excel. Power users have always been tinkering in their OS that's nothing new, but I'm talking about the average Joe.

The main problem still is that for some configuration you still need to use the CLI, the average user does not want to touch that no matter how powerful it is, they want a fully functional GUI that lets you so exactly the same thing but by clicking on buttons. Pair that with drivers that either do not exist or will not work for (some) of your hardware, odd crashed like the Bluetooth stack crapping out and not working anymore until you restart the system, or the system that hangs from hibernation with a black screen. So unless those hurdles are tackled the Linux adoption rate will stay low because the average user wants a system that works, and not one they have to debug.

I've been on and off different distros of Linux since Ubuntu 6 using Pop_OS! as my daily driver for work a few years now, and the same problems I had then are still here today which is a shame honestly.

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn't have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you. --Penn Jillette

Think of the man what you will, but this has to be the best answer for that dumb question.