fo3gog: Do GOG games installers use the same redistributables found on the official microsoft websites or are they modified somehow? Basically I'm trying to figure out if uninstalling the redistributables installed by GOG games, and using the ones from Microsofts wesbites instead will affect performance, stability, etc. in any way.

I use a ton of mods and programs which require all the different redistributables and typically install all of them from 2005-2019 directly from Microsofts wesbites to make sure all my bases are covered. Is this acceptable or should I ensure that the redistributables installed during the GOG games installation remain intact?

§pec†re: This is why service packs were a good idea instead of the idiots at microsoft deciding to copy the linux cancer of dependency hell or prerequisites retardation.

AstralWanderer: It is possible for a game to require a specific version of a Visual C++ library but really rare (I'm struggling to remember the 1-2 cases I've come across).AstralWanderer: An all-in-one is a absolute delight compared to having to chase down the individual downloads - particularly since MS don't bother indicating on their download pages if there is a later version available.

However I would like to give a shout out to Abbodi1406's All-in-One since it only requires 16.8MB (compared to the 80-95MB of the TechPowerUp versions) and will remove older/non-compliant versions. VirusTotal results can be found here (at time of posting it was flagged by 2 scanners out of 62, and those 2 give different results so I'm inclined to dismiss them as false positives).

Darvond: I've never really encountered this in my 5+ years of using Linux fulltime.