Linux

These folks are all giving great advice but also let us know when you're ready to really fuck around and have fun with your Linux superpowers 😀

You, in practically no time at all: "Nearly everything is working great! Now I want to make my desktop change it's background to NASA's picture of the day while also putting all my PC's status monitors on there. Oh! And I want my PC to back itself up every hour over the network automatically with the ability to restore files I deleted last week. I've got KDE Connect on my phone and it's awesome!"

Then, later: "I bought a Raspberry Pi and I want to turn it into a home theater streaming system and emulation station."

...and later: "What docker images do you guys recommend? I want to setup some home automation. What do you guys think of Pi-hole?"

"I've got four Raspberry Pis doing various things in my home and I'm thinking about getting Banana Pi board to be my router. OpenWRT or full Linux on it? What do you guys think?"

...and even later: "I taught myself Python..." 🤣

There's tons of youtube videos / tutorials on how to create a live usb of a distro, such as linux mint. This will allow you to boot into linux and play around without installing anything and get a feel for linux. It's nowhere as tech wizardry as you think.

And if all your games are on steam and don't have anti cheat things, they'll probably just all work with proton (linux compatibility tool in steam).

Unless the Steamdeck flew under your radar you should know that you can absolutly play games on Linux. Most of the exceptions are big online games with crazy anti-cheats (yeah in that case no luck).

As for hope : migrating to another OS (be it Linux, MacOS or whatever) can be disorienting at first, wich tend to repel some people (it's like learning how to use a pc for the first time), that's actually the most important thing to keep in mind for everything to go smoothly, you don't need to be a tech wizzard, just to be patient.

As long as you don't rush things, don't expect everything to behave as somekind of windows clone and learn how it works a bit you should be fine.

Before you try anything I'd also suggest you check if all the software you are using are available on Linux and if not what alternative you can use : alternativeto.net can help. To check if the games you play work you can also go to protondb.com. Preparing as much as you can before install is a huge plus, and it's really not that hard.

As an exemple I've helped a curious friend who wanted to try Linux, they're the most tech illiterate person I've ever known..like even worse than some old people. It took them two hard month to be fully acclimated, like as fine as they were doing on windows if not better. Never even asked me for help ever since. (My eyes still bleed when I see how they're using their pc but they clearly have no issue doing whatever they're doing) So if they can I'm sure anyone can.

you are going to be fine! linux has better compat than windows now unless you use a ton of proprietary, locked software. your average linux distro can do steam gaming pretty well, and there are distros like bazzite and garuda and popos that do some or all of the configuration for you (based on your hardware and usage).

Yes. Steam is available on Linux, pretty easy to install and it comes with a compatibility layer (Proton) which works quite well.

Linux is a bit different than Windows. But I'd say just using it is about as complicated as using Windows. You'll just have to try and see whether you like it. And if it's hard or easy for you to relearn a few things. I mean if you're in the Browser and Steam all day, those will be the same applications and also look and work the same way. Other than that you could face some issues with gaming hardware and you have to fiddle with things, or everything works out of the box. You can't tell beforehand.

I'd say try Kubuntu. It's like Ubuntu but with KDE (Windows-like user interface) instead of GNOME (shitty Mac clone turned tablet like interface). It's well-supported and is easy to use. Also supports new technologies like HDR which Mint is lacking. Though you can install KDE on pretty much any distro (Mint included) but it's a good starting place.

Note to fellow Linux veterans: Yes, I know snaps suck but it is not something new users need concearn themselves with. Kubuntu is a great distro except for snaps which aren't going to affect OP's use-case (or most use-cases. Also sorry for shitting on GNOME so much. If you like it that's cool, I just don't think we should be recomending it to people coming from Windows.

best way to learn is to dive in start with mint'pop,bazzite,fedora kintonite, or anduin as a good starting distro and just start expiermenting

If you want real gaming performance then arch all the way with archinstall. Trust, it's insanely good and you can get double of what you get on windows in terms of performance. Boot times are also insane. I have used so many distros and I can tell you that arch is king for performance.

I'm moving at the moment. Linux Mint is a good stable Windows alternative, but I wanted to separate gaming from other things so I am dual booting. I have had luck with Pop_OS! before but recently had issues with a laptop WiFi adapter, had some issues getting Bazzite working, so ended up with CachyOS, which has been really slick and easy so far.

A nice thing with Linux is how easy it is to cycle through a few distros if you have your main files on a different drive or partition, since you don't lose anything important when switching that way.

What I'll say is, I've got no comp sci degree, and when I started, I had no idea how the terminal worked. But... My mindset was the following:

1. I really don't like windows, I'm not going back
2. I don't like paying others to "do it for me", I want to do it myself
3. I want the freedom to be able to change anything to make the machine fit me, even if that means I need to learn things along the way.

If you're the type of person where this general philosophy, you're going to crush it.

But if you're more along the lines of "I just use this computer as a tool to do the things I want, I just need the computer out of the way, and working consistently so I can get on with my actual goals", you probably will hate it. Becuase all your troubleshooting experiences will be "why doesn't this thing just work, like it does on Windows?"