I second disabling Nouveau via blacklist, and I’m unsure if there is similar software for Lenovo, but I use asusctl to force the use of the Nvidia card over the integrated Vega graphics. This could very well be an issue with graphics card switching, so it’s worth looking into.

As for distro recs, while most would probably recommended Linux Mint for beginners, I prefer to recommend Bazzite. It’s Fedora-based, but comes with Nvidia drivers and lots of gaming optimization baked-in.

It’s worth looking into Lutris for non-Steam games as well. Comes preinstalled with Bazzite (heavily gaming-optimized Linux distro), though I don’t have any non-Steam games to try it on since Steam works fine for all the games I play.

Well, you could use the wrong finger. After 3 attempts, my GrapheneOS install brings up the password field, but you can go back to the lock screen and try 2 more times until it locks out of fingerprint unlock (so 5 times total). You could always hold the power button down while it’s in your pocket or bag, pretending you are searching for the phone or something, and then lock it down as soon as you lift the screen up.

Well, the hardening, just as with Tor Browser, does break some sites. It comes preinstalled with NoScript and uBlock Origin, the former of which you will either have to learn how to use or disable, depending on your wants for privacy. While it doesn’t include some of the anti-features of base Firefox, it is still based on Firefox so it will have similar performance for similar tasks.

Personally, I use Mullvad for most of my browsing, and Firefox for a few specific things (like staying logged into site long-term and such).

It’s available as a flatpak via Flathub for an easy installation, otherwise you can check https://mullvad.net/en/browser/linux for distro-specific installation instructions.

I use Mullvad Browser. It’s maintained in coordination with the Tor Project, and is essentially the Tor Browser with Tor itself stripped out. Same browser fingerprinting protections, however, among other things.

EDIT: I’d like to clarify that this has nothing to do with my trust in Mozilla or Firefox itself, especially not concerning recent panics about benign changes. I still use Firefox on the side, it just does not have fingerprinting protections by default, and hardening it manually leads to minor differences between user configurations (even with Arkenfox if that’s still around) that is solved by Mullvad Browser for me. I use Mullvad Browser for my main browsing, and Firefox for specific exceptions. Firefox itself is fine, and no, Mozilla is not burning it to the ground.

Correct, but I believe the user is looking for a cracked version, as they don’t have a license. The likelihood of that existing is significantly lower on Linux than it is for Windows given the much smaller userbase, the fragmentation into multiple package formats, and the overall distaste of proprietary software in the Linux community.

I can’t help with pirating software, your options are going to be heavily limited because most people running Linux would just prefer open source alternatives (like Blender), so it’s far less likely you will find cracked software specifically made for Linux (plus, there is a far smaller userbase). On some quick searching, I did find someone who had issues running Houdini in a VM (for multiple distros), but it worked fine when it was installed natively. I’m not seeing an entry in the WINE database for Houdini, so while you could always try running a Windows version through WINE, given the type of program it is, I highly doubt it would run without issue. I have no recommendations on how to get ahold of a Linux compatible version without a license.

Because it’s had stellar Wayland streaming support (with audio) for somewhere around 2 years at this point, is still way better in that regard than native Discord, and has a thriving plugin suite that lets you enjoy features the native app will never allow.

virt-manager is my go-to. There’s also Gnome Boxes, but I’ve never used it myself. virt-manager is the best I’ve tried, personally. Both use KVM, so they should be much more resource efficient

UPDATE: Looks like in the compatibility list, the last letter can sometimes be omitted, so it does look like your model (G513QY) is in fact supported, as G513Q is listed in the supported devices list. That should mean most main functions work.

I can’t find specific listed support for this model through asusctl, but it definitely supports similar models. There is a very good chance everything with asusctl will work out of the box, and if not, open a ticket and they’ll help figure out what would need to be changed to add support. asusctl supports stuff like fan curve control, aura sync (RGB stuff), throttling profiles, and GPU mode (hybrid/integrated/dedicated) switching, all in Linux. There is a GUI frontend for it that comes with it called rog-control-center if you don’t wanna use command line, but it will have fewer features exposed.

You can find info about it at their GitHub:

https://github.com/flukejones/asusctl

UPDATE: Looks like in the compatibility list, the last letter can sometimes be omitted, so it does look like your model (G513QY) is in fact supported, as G513Q is listed in the supported devices list. That should mean most main functions work.

(Sent this update as an extra comment in case your instance doesn’t sync my edit by the time you see this comment)

Your best bet for finding compatibility with WINE (and by extension Bottles, because that’s what it uses) is through their AppDB:

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse Applications&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true

Here is the page for Photoshop (and all its different versions) and here is the page for Fusion 360 (or rather, a version of it being developed to work with WINE)

As with many things WINE, the answer is “it depends” (silver is workable, but still has very significant flaws). You can always try it out yourself, and I recommend walking through the HowTos that people post in the listings and the known bugs. The two programs you asked about are particularly difficult, as they are incredibly complex and use many libraries that are specific to only their own application, meaning their implementation in WINE is not priority (WINE tries to be as compatible as possible, targeting the broadest stuff first before gradually narrowing). Most programs “just work” through WINE, but these two in particular have been struggles to get working for years. Development is always happening, so I recommend to try it out if you’re curious if it’ll work for you. And if not, perhaps it will be better in a couple years.

The token recommendation for apps that don’t work through WINE is to try to find alternatives that play nicer. After all, supporting the anticompetitive business practices of Adobe or Autodesk spits in the face of Linux and the libre software movement as a whole. If you are able to reasonably find alternatives, then that would be ideal, but I find that recommendation quite naïve. As an alternative, you can run Windows in a VM from Linux, or you could dual boot if you only need to use these programs occasionally.

Bottles is really just a frontend for WINE with some extra features baked into the GUI to make the experience better for the end user. Compatibility in Bottles will still be determined by the compatibility a program has through WINE.