A pretty basic lightweight desktop environment (like XFCE) is enough for me. It is there mainly just for me to launch (graphical) applications.

As long as it has some features that I take granted nowadays, like being able to search for an application in the start menu (which is quite common nowadays, but is missing from e.g. the old Windows XP user interface, and for some reason from the Raspberry Pi4 default OS), and that copy&pasting files and other clipboard stuff is not too complicated (albeit many file operations in Linux I tend to do in the terminal window anyway, but not always...).

What else do I need, and why would I care about the differences between MATE, Cinnamon etc.?

Indeed. It turns out that Linux support extends to all the Ubuntu family. This can be relevant to people choosing a Linux distribution who want to play GOG games.

Following the link to the LInux support pages,

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212456929-General-questions?product=gog

The bold is mine for clarification.

<<
Which Linux distributions do you support?
We test and support our games on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Our support also extends to any future non-LTS releases of Ubuntu that has not reached it end of life yet, official Ubuntu flavors (like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.), and derivatives (e.g. Linux Mint, elementaryOS etc.).

As long as your operating system is part of the Ubuntu family, you have nothing to worry about. Naturally, our technical support and refund policy apply to all these versions, as long as you meet the minimal requirements for the game you bought.

Are you planning to add official support for more Linux distributions?
There are no plans to officially support other Linux distributions at this time, sorry.

How to run the system report?
./start.sh --sysrep

or
./gog-system-report.sh

in “support” game subfolder.
>>

linux is probably the worst os right now, it has so many issues
no wonder gog doesnt want to suppot this mess

We are way past April 1st.

Thats why you should stop using linux , it was meant to be a joke os

I seem to remember you were using Manjaro KDE. What's the story behind that?

it starts but other than that i wouldnt really use it , win is just better , win works with every app

As I was saying, if your main need is gaming, then it's probably for the better to stick with Windows.
Both have advantages and disadvantages, though Windows 10 really takes the cake when it comes to restricting the user and imposing its own will.

Windows 10 on my work laptop seem to have become more and more unstable for some reason. Just an hour ago it "crashed" (or rather, became unresponsive) and I couldn't even close programs or shut it down gracefully (I've set the default action for the power button to be "Shutdown", just for these kind of cases where I get stuck; a graceful shutdown is better than power off, even if I lose any non-saved work in the process). The mouse still moved though and I could get to the Ctrl-Alt-Del screen, but when I selected "sign out" from there, it got stuck there forever.

In the end all I could do was to do a power off for the whole laptop, just in the heat of busy work. A bit similar happened last week, before that it was stable (enough).

Maybe I'll run a hardware diagnostics for the laptop, and if it doesn't find anything, maybe reinstall Windows 10 from a clean table (ie. reset the installation). I haven't had to do a similar reinstallation to my Linux machines ever, because the system would have become increasingly unstable... It is odd because I haven't really installed that much programs to the laptop, as I normally do all my work connecting to a remove server with it (using VPN and RDP).

It would be nice though if there was a hardware problem, because then I'd ask my boss for a new work laptop: an M1 Apple! Not that I would buy one with my own money (as they are IMHO overpriced for what they offer, and the SSD can't be replaced which is just stupid design from Apple), but I am still interested in trying it out and using it, and its battery life is just insane. My colleague has one but he had to get a 256GB SSD version as the 512GB SSD version was out of stock... And as said, you can't even replace the SSD yourself to a bigger one...

Manjaro is a very nice distro, It takes the nifty Arch and adds just enough comfort features to make it hospitable. KDE is not my first choice wm, but what can you do? You should be comfortable with text file configuration because of the Arch heritage.

Windows only works for apps for which Windows versions exist, or which can be emulated on Windows systems, and the latter case is typically not ideal.

While this may be a large subset of all the apps, applications, and programs out there, it's still only a proper subset, and there are programs out there that won't run on Windows.

(For example, I believe you can't use libTAS on a Windows system.)

Cool. I expect this is another old GOG page that the current staff have forgotten about, but it would be nice to bring out this if someone ever needs support for a game and is told his distro isn't supported.

Just use a tool like TCPView (both in Windows and Linux) and you will have a better understanding.
Also, a proper firewall (not Windows Firewall, that is just a bad joke at this point) to monitor network traffic. You will be surprised. For example, a server will be contacted when you go into Settings (why is that even necessary?), or when using the search bar (doesn't matter if you are looking for local files, you will still see network activity). Again, is that even necessary?
DirectX 12 is one of the major reasons many went along with the update route. Arguably, gaming is the leading factor.

And when it comes to looks, it has nothing over Windows 7, at least in my opinion. It adds more color than, say, Windows 8.1, but at what cost in the end? Windows personalisation is, much like other functions, a joke. To top it all off, they're still mixing legacy tools and UI elements with more modern ones. Makes you look at it and think: what is this thing even supposed to be?
The road ahead is not that bright if you ask me.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uLOIVY7RZIE

Here's something intriguing about data usage on Windows 10 (see attachment). Pretty busy this "System", mhmm.

Yes, Id have heard about it. Some things to consider:
* There is apparently a way to turn it off, so that shutting down does a full shutdown rather than just hibernation. Because of the next point, I recommend doing this on dual boot systems.
* If you shut down the computer, then boot into a different operating system, attempting to access any file system that Windows had mounted at the time (in practice, I believe this includes all filesystems on internal drives that Windows understands, so not ext4/btrfs) is very likely to cause file system corruption.
* You can do something similar in Linux by closing programs, dumping caches (to avoid writing the caches to disk when they can be easily recovered after reboot), and then hibernating. (To dump caches, do "echo 3 | sudo tee
/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"; aside from when hibernating, disk benchmarking is probably the only time that it makes sense to do this.)