Just finished S1 myself, I agree with your assessment. There are probably more examples out there but this is definitely by far the most realistic/least betraying representation of hacker culture I've seen(I wonder how Darlene was received on set after her performance as a similar character in The Strain which was more akin to Hackerman) Elliot resonated with me also, especially the whole thing with the almost invisible line between reality and delusion that has troubled myself in the past. Have you seen Kali? Haven't tried that particular distro myself but it should give you that hacker feeling(and maybe some NSA attention if you play your cards right!)
I'd heard of Kali (but forgotten). Right now I still game just a little too much to fully make the switch to Linux, and don't have a spare machine on which to put it. I keep hoping I'll be able to build a new desktop one day soon, but that seems unlikely absent a dramatic shift in my personal finances. As for the show, I feel like I should've said more, but it's tough to talk about without spoiling the plot. The hacking bits felt right, even though I don't really have the technological chops to say more than that. And I agree they did the disconnect well, even if a tad predictably.
Yeah, I want to compare it to a certain film beginning with p but can't without spoiling it! Gaming is why I don't switch to Linux aswell. Have you tried Virtual Box? Once you install Guest Additions, you get hardware accelerated UI and it's as responsive as native, and Vbox does a great job emulating separate hardware so everything should work right too. I have two monitors, normally with Ubuntu running on one and Windows 8.1 on the other, I can drag files between them and share the clipboard which is very nice.
Huh. That may actually make some sense on my laptop where I don't game as much. Do you know how Linux support for hybrid SSD/platter drives is these days?