Honestly, it's easier to keep my Debian machine from killing itself than any Windows install.

It seems like Windows actively sabotages itself for no reason.

It's only CPUs lacking a specific extension. Nehalem or newer for Intel or Phenom or newer for AMD will still work. Those CPUs aren't even officially supported by their weird restrictions.

So this is anecdotal I know, but I work on a Mac, so I've only ever held on to Windows for gaming. (Sidenote: The Mac isn't my choice, either, but it has a terminal, and it does the job)

I've definitely tried to go fully Linux in the past, but it was always gaming that killed it for me. Wine was just never very consistent for me in this area.

Long story but, I recently lost my gaming machine, and was gifted a friends old one. Also a long story, but he ended up putting Linux on it for me. I figured I'd use it as is until payday before buying a key for Windows.

Holy shit gaming on Linux become has easy! Steam/proton is amazing!

I won't lie, it's not always as simple as install and run, but the tweaking that's been required has been orders of magnitude simpler than what it used to be. Click a box 90% of the time, Click a box and add a run parameter for another 5%.

The only games that haven't worked for me are Starfield and Cyberpunk (accounting for the last 5%.)

Starfield might just be too much for this old machine, but Cyberpunk I have no idea. Neither are a huge loss to me when Balders Gate, and Elite Dangerous are running fine. Also long standing favourites like Just Cause 3/4 work perfectly too.

I'm thrilled and a little shocked to say I think I'm finally done with Windows

Do it. I made the switch a few months ago, and it's gone better than I'd expected. Now running Linux Mint on my desktop and laptop. I set my laptop up with dual boot, just so I can easily and natively run Windows apps if needed.

I'd recommend everyone switch to Linux! I only had to go back because of a very niche problem with head tracking support. Linux is ready for most people though.