Linux

Why wait? There's no need for Windows, unless you're running some super-specialized app. The new versions of Windows already have telemetry and privacy issues, so why just go with minimal security options that MS is selling you? You can do almost everything in Linux just as well, if not better, than Windows does at this point. Start with Linux Mint, which is the most Windows-y distribution and you should be golden.

I switched a year or so ago and never looked back. there will be issues you need to overcome though. so better start with dualboot before windows 10 is eol

Throwing out another idea: I upgraded an aging laptop and put mint on it and it's my main right now, but I can get on the newer windows computer if I need to. I rarely need to now, though things will come up and its nice to have an out. Recently it was getting my printer working which I so rarely use. Didn't have the patience, just needed the doc printed, flipped to windows.

It's a little sad to me. I watched windows rise to its peak with windows 2000 and slowly fall. Been using it since 3.1, and had dos-only for a little while before that. It's time to say goodbye. Been on and off with Linux since the early 2000s but this is my first real big push to use it outside of work or projects. Linux has come a long way from those days.

Jump ship. Just know, windows will pull you back in, especially if you work in corporate/office work. I was doing my work from home on Linux for two years straight, then my work mandated windows 11 for everyone. It’s been a nightmare. I just want my xfce!

Doo Eeeet, Doo EEeet Now!!!

Seriously though, I vote VM under linux. Spin it up for whatever you need, use it less and less, no regrets...

No better way to learn and get used to it than ripping off the bandage and being forced to deal with it. That's what I did. Been Windows-free for ten years. If you still have a Windows partition around, it may be too tempting to just go back to it when things get a bit hairy.

As far as games, yeah, it sucks that I can't play some games, but I've filled that time with more productive hobbies. I can program C and C++ now, self taught on Linux.

But the more people that jump ship, the more developers will target Linux, so it's just a matter of time now before you can play anything again. It's definitely a 1000x better environment now than when I switched back then.

Every sane person will recommend Linux only. However not everyone can use it. WMs decrease performance so you'll need good hardware. Dualboot may delete one of your OSes. It's a matter of if it's worth it or not. I personally don't see a problem with running Windows only for gaming. Though if you're paranoid about privacy then it may not be a good idea if your Linux partition is not encrypted (if there are backdoors, someone can mount your Linux partition remotely and read it etc etc). If you still want to keep Windows, buy a second physical drive to avoid the OS deletion risk.

If you switch to single boot Linux you can always install Windows in a virtual machine later in a pinch.

Jump ship with us all! 😁 At this point, the very few games that I am leaving behind are only the ones that use anticheat systems that do not work with linux, and I don't think I'll really miss letting a game company rootkit my macine...

I would go the VM route first, and if you run into any troubles then you still always have the option of installing a 2nd hard drive for bare-metal windows dual boot later. If you do need to dual boot, I don't recommend partitioning one hard drive. Windows isn't good at sharing.

If you're new to linux and unsure about what distribution to install, there are plenty of better sources online with distro recommendations. I tend to use Debian on server/headless and Fedora for desktop/laptop. But I will say, picking an option with the KDE/Plasma desktop environment will probably be the easiest transition. It should feel and look pretty familiar to what you are used to with Windows and many distros offer an installation for KDE/Plasma.

I tried dual-booting Win10 and Arch for a few months. It was problematic.

I had to set the clock every time I switched because one expected the hardware clock to use UTC time and the other expected local time.

NTFS on Linux is not good. The driver works, but there are fundamental differences between NTFS and Unix-like filesystems that makes cooperation difficult (e.g. NTFS uses ACLs instead of the user/group ownership and user/group/others permissions of Unix). Windows also places additional restrictions on the filesystem (e.g. NTFS supports file names that contain :, Windows doesn't) that can completely bork the volume if violated.

But the worst offender, and what made me nuke Windows entirely, is Windows Update. It completely fucked up the boot partition, deleted the bootloader, then died and left Windows unusable.

These are all issues that can be solved, if you know how to solve them. My advice is to go cold turkey and delete Windows from your life.

Better just start dual booting. If you begin to use Windows less and less, you can throw away that Windows partition and expand your Linux partition.

Using Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) and a fast USB thumbdrive, such as Kingston DataTraveler Max - https://www.storagereview.com/review/kingston-datatraveler-max-review, you can make a "Windows To Go" installation.

Now you have a Windows install that you can boot directly from the thumbdrive when the need arise.
Perfect for booting up if your bios can't updated directly from the usb drive and forces you into Windows, or to run that one software you can't replace just yet and that refuses your attempts to run with wine.

Just make sure that it's an ssd usb thumbdrive or it's gonna be too slow to be any use.

My recommendation would be dual-boot until you get everything you need working and have had everything working for a month or two under Linux. Then do a full image backup of the Windows partitions with the Windows backup utility and keep it around just in case. After that spin-up a Windows VM for any edge cases you might come across and enjoy Linux.

Jump ship. If you can make do without windows, do so. It takes away so much of the frustration, and you just learn to let it go when devs won't make linux-compatible binaries: after all, it's basically them telling you they need to be able to spy on you, so why use their app?