Signal sucks :(
SimpleX is better!
Oh, don't worry about games. With Steam's Proton, they work like a charm (there are exceptions of coarse, but the majority does). Sometimes even better than on Windows. For non-Steam games there are options as well.
The biggest problem I've seen people struggle with when migrating from Windows to Linux is that they do things the Windows way, but this is a different operating system, so obviously it doesn't work and they get frustrated. The hardest part of switching to Linux is being able to and willing to learn how to use a computer again, but from a different perspective.
Don't forget that official Russian media (like any other) is heavily censored and influenced by the government's interests, so they won't show people who don't think that way on purpose. Plus those who disagree might just outright tell reporters to go fuck themselves, instead of telling them their honest opinion, which would obviously not go live.
As for those brainwashd, in my experience, - most of them actually think very low of Ukraine and think that attacking it was absolutely, positively a good thing.
But the problem of grouping people appears again...
In any case, it at least won't touch anything outside the vm.