Just remember to turn steam play on for all titles in Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility.

As others have said, Mint is a great starting option. It looks familiar when coming from Windows, and almost everything works without having to touch a terminal.

AAA games with anti-cheat may not work, but just about everything else will. Check Proton DB for each game's compatibility.
You can add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of Proton. Lutris can also work for some Windows games.

If you want to try Linux distributions to see what they're like before committing, VirtualBox or other virtual machine programs can give you a risk-free preview.

Another option is a live preview. Install Linux Mint on a USB using Rufus or a similar program, then boot your computer from the USB. So long as you don't access your computer's hard drive (under devices on the left of the file manager) or run the installer, no changes should be made from your computer. You can simply reboot and remove the USB to go back to your usual OS.

If you are going to dual-boot, install Windows first. Windows has a habit of overriding or deleting Linux if it's installed second. If you just want to shrink your Windows partition to allow room for Linux, shrink it from Windows. Linux can move "unmovable" Windows files resulting in Windows not booting.

Always have a backup of everything you are not prepared to lose before you play with installing operating systems (and make sure it's disconnected from that computer). Data loss from software issues is rare, but mistakes are difficult (sometimes impossible) to reverse, particularly as a beginner.

Not so much help but hope: I got rid of Windows 11 and switched fully to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. I had no idea what I was doing but I tested things on USB and also on a very old laptop I had laying around before I made it my daily driver.

I'm not particularly a tech person. I own a small creative business and have a toddler, but I figured out what I needed to quickly. I don't game and didnt use Winsows exclusive software so have no opinions about that.

What I didn't expect: to actually be genuinely interested in my computer again for the first time since I was a teenager (which was not recent...). I love customizing my desktop. I love discovering new open source software. I'm learning more than I expected and it's just a totally different relationship with the tech I use every day, in a nice way. And no more BS ads / bloat when I'm just trying to exist on my computer.

• before you switch, sort out your apps. Look at what you use on windows, see if it runs on Linux. If not, find a replacement that does and test it out.
• Most Linux distros can boot into a desktop from a thumb drive. You can play and test without touching your windows installation.
• in that vein, ventoy is neat. You can make a bootable drive and drop ISOs in a folder to boot from. No messing with etcher or whatever it’s called
• desktop environment matters as much as the distro. Check out gnome, KDE, and cinnamon.

You have received tons of useful responses, so I will not add more, except to tell you that the change is extremely worth it, easier than it seems and extremely entertaining.

I personally use Kubuntu (I love the KDE environment) and sometimes play Steam games by using Proton.

Good luck on your Linux journey!

Honestly there is nothing to learn, unless you pick arch which is annoying to install, otherwise everything is pretty simple and for the most part just works.

Check your games on ProtonDB

The only games in my library that don't work are entirely the publisher's fault for blacklisting Linux in their anticheat, and it's very few games even then.

Absolutely. I likewise moved to Linux more out of frustration with Windows than any of my own tech ability. It needn't be a concerted effort either. I had it on a separate SSD (for a more stable dual-boot) and dabbled for a couple of years until I found myself gradually booting into Linux instead of Windows more and more.

This post is like catnip to Lemmy users.

Proton Linux is one of the best gaming centric operating systems out there so give that a try maybe

A lot of people here have already given good advice. I shall add my experience, recommendation and some tips (may incidentally repeat some of them).

1. If you play some games with kernel level anti-cheat (like Rainbow Six Siege, Apex, Valorant, LoL, Fortnite, Battlefield games, Destiny 2 among others), you will have to stick to dual-boot. Check on ProtonDB for compatibility of games. I have 500+ games on Steam and pretty much everything I've played has worked so far.

In terms of other software you use, make sure you have alternatives that work on Linux.

• For Photoshop, there's Krita/GIMP.
• For Video editing, there's Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve, etc.
• For browsing and office apps, there's LibreWolf and LibreOffice.

If you happen to have any software that you don't have a good alternative or that only runs on Windows, then you'll have to stick to dual booting.

2. If you do end up dual booting, DO NOT use your external HDD in NTFS to run games on linux. It will work for a while, but you'll constantly have to 'chkdsk' or check disk on Windows every time your HDD is found corrupted. Also, NTFS is Windows' proprietary filesystem. So, I've heard that using ntfs-fix (chkdsk equivalent on linux) might cause data loss. Not sure how far it's true, but be cautious of using that too. But otherwise, I believe that just reading files from NTFS drive usually is not a problem.

• If you are NOT dual booting however, you won't have to face this mess. You can backup the data on your HDD somewhere, format it in 'ext4' filesystem for Linux-only use ('Exfat' if you want to share any data with others on Windows/Mac) and restore all your files back to this HDD in ext4. Hope you have extra HDD with enough free space to move your files while you convert disks to ext4. You can also probably use cloud services for backup.

3. I've used Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Fedora.

• Had faced a lot of issues with Ubuntu back in the day, and Snap Steam is a mess. So, avoid it.
• Mint is easy to use, removes snap from Ubuntu and just uses apt, has a great Desktop Environment called Cinnamon, and I'd usually recommend this to someone new, but I wanted to shift from X-11 to Wayland for security reasons and HDR support among others. If Wayland worked well with Mint, I'd still be using it today, but that was the only reason I moved away from it.
• While Arch is nice, it's certainly not for someone new.
• That leaves us with Fedora KDE, which would be my recommendation. It has good security features like SE-Linux out of the box. The reason I suggest KDE over Gnome is so that you might have an easier transition from Windows to Linux. Once you have a hang of this, you can later use a pen drive to load other distro with other DE like Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon, Cosmic, etc and test them out by live booting.

4. Speaking of pendrives, make sure to always have one with Ventoy installed and the distribution you're using. This will be handy if you want to troubleshoot your system anytime. And I say Ventoy over others because it makes loading distro easier. You can just drag and drop the ISO files instead of having to burn with Balena Etcher or Rufus everytime.

• Rufus is great, but if you're moving out of Windows, you don't need it.
• And I have seen a lot of people have trouble with using Balena Etcher. So, avoid it.

5. • Turn off Secure Boot in BIOS. (And maybe also fast boot).

• And if your disk is on RAID instead of AHCI, you might have trouble installing. So, you might want to set your SATA configuration to AHCI mode in BIOS if you face issues.

6. If you end up choosing Fedora, you may want to follow this.

Fedora only comes with FOSS by default. So, you'll have to install Nvidia driver and proprietary multimedia Codecs separately by including RPMFusion repo.

• You can download the free and non-free repo files from the RPM-Fusion site(Graphical Setup) and install them through the Software Center. After adding the repo, you might have to enable them in the Settings of Discover Software Center. Enable all of them except those containing the words 'testing', 'Test', 'Source', 'Debug' and 'google chrome'.

• After that, it's just a few lines you type in the terminal (Konsole by default) for installing driver and codecs. Make sure to update the system and restart first before doing these.

For Nvidia driver, type:

sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia

For optional CUDA support, type:

sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

For Video acceleration support, type:

sudo dnf install nvidia-vaapi-driver libva-utils vdpauinfo

For Codecs, type:

sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing

Steam is also included in the non-free repo. You may install it by typing:

sudo dnf install steam

7. Other than these, most applications can now be installed directly from the store as a Flatpak. You can select them in the store between Flatpaks, Fedora managed Flatpaks and Fedora Linux app for a particular one.

• For flatpak apps, you'll see a tick next to the developer if they are verified. So, you can look out for that if necessary.
• Make sure 'Flathub' repo is enabled in the Settings of Discover Software Center for the Flatpak apps to appear.

NOTE: Every time the video driver updates, you will have to do a follow-on update for flatpak runtimes. You might see a bunch of 'Application platform' and 'Freedesktop' stuff which you'll have to install. If you fail to do this, you might suddenly find flatpak applications not working properly.

8. Troubleshooting tips:

• If Steam doesn't launch the first time, type:

__GL_CONSTANT_FRAME_RATE_HINT=3 steam

• If your system is frozen, try switching to TTY by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F3) and going back to GUI by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F2)*. *Could be F1 in some cases.

• To check what errors you got during the recent boot,

journalctl -b 0 -p err

Apart from the driver installation and some troubleshooting, you generally won't have to use the terminal if you're averse to it.

9. In terms of deGoogling, I'd recommend the following:

• Buy a pixel and install Graphene OS.

Switch to

• Tuta/Proton Mail for email,

• Proton/Tresorit Drive for storage,

• Mullvad (or i, proton) VPN or (Rethink DNS for firewall) I am not sure if you can use both Rethink and VPN at the same time. I assume there is a way.

• OsmAnd for maps,

• Newpipe for youtube frontend(Grayjay on Linux),

• Bitwarden/KeepassXC for Password management,

• Aegis for TOTP

• Fdroid, Accrescent, Aurora for App store.

• Molly FOSS for Messaging.

As others have mentioned, use Mint. Since you game, some games won’t run on Linux because of their anticheat, and to that I decided to use a dual boot system. I gave 500gb to windows, the rest to Linux. Anything that won’t run on Linux (some early access games, COD, Tarkov) goes on the windows partition. 500gb doesn’t seem like much when COD takes about 1/2 of that, but everything else I’ve played runs fine on Linux.

I also like the smaller partition because it makes me be choose what I leave installed, and if I’m not playing, I just uninstall whatever game needs to go

If your library is on steam, then there's nothing to worry about! Works natively on Linux. If your library is on other platforms, I'd honestly think twice about switching full time. Dual booting might be a better option. My library is split amongst multiple platforms and I decided that it wasn't working well enough for me. Steam games will work great though!

Many distros are easy enough to install and navigate as a newbie. My go to for years now has been Linux Mint! It's based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.

I have 15 years of experience and do free infinite troubleshooting on matrix, feel free to add me. I recommend you go with aurora, because it is immutable, kde based, and well documented.

immutable means the base system is read only and updates are applied ontop of it, meaning you can easily roll back an update that went bad, and the apps are separate from the core operating system and thus can never break them (unless you try really hard).

kde is a desktop environment, it is most similar to windows and the rate of development dwarfs almost everything else, please whatever you do for your first system use kde.

aurora is a slightly modified fedora and fedora is one of the most commonly used options, the reason not to use base fedora is that aurora includes some QoL features, for example because of issues with patents twitch doesn't work on fedora but does on aurora.

I take it you’ve never even tried Linux before. Both of those things are not things that will hold you back. My mom uses Linux, and she barely knows what “right click” means.

With regard to your Steam games, as long as you don’t play games that use restrictive anticheat, you’ll be fine.

Lots of good advice here. I’ll add a bit about dual booting.

1. the problem with dual booting is when you use the same physical hard drive. Windows doesn’t play nice sometimes on the same drive. Just do yourself a favor and buy a second ssd. Then you can break linux six ways to Sunday and always have a windows backup. (And if you want to be extra safe - you can just unplug your windows drive during Linux install and you can’t f up and pick the wrong drive by accident)

2. dual booting is nice just in case something doesn’t work - you can easily switch back to windows.

3. dual booting sucks because there’s very few things that don’t work in Linux - it just requires a little elbow grease to figure out. But having a windows partition right there leads to many people giving up way too early with fixing their issues.

My recommendation is always to have more than one drive in your computer. It’s YOUR computer. Regardless of what you pick as your “main” OS, you always have another spot to screw around in. Distro hop, extra storage, set up a hiveos miner, whatever. Its flexibility and screwing around with other things helps you understand what’s YOUR computer vs what is Microsoft’s OS.

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).

I was you 18 months ago. It's certainly achievable, even with a crazy busy schedule. Highly recommended that you go for it.

Here are the unpopular opinions that attract downvotes:

• adopting Linux is painful. Stuff breaks. Stuff doesnt work. You will be battling uphill, but hopefully you'll find it worthwhile in the end.
• moving to Linux permanently wouldn't have been possible for me without AI. Now you can ask AI and it will almost always solve the problem for you. In the old days, you'd just have forum posts saying "just compile the driver and do a 10 step process with terminal that you need to figure out from the wiki....noob". But now, these previously system breaking problems are now easily solvable without spending the whole weekend on a single issue.
• don't let go of Windows to start with. Put Linux on a secondary machine. Do not dual boot, you will break your installation and won't be able to troubleshoot it and will have to do a full wipe (along with the time and data loss that comes with that).
• Don't get caught up in the distro wars. Pick Linux Mint, or a similar very beginner friendly distro. I prefer KDE desktop so I would recommend something else..... But don't go for anything with even moderate difficulty.
• Check protondB.com for the games you play. Some don't work on Linux (e.g. Apex Legends).

There is hope lots of YouTube channels, articles by bloggers such as Its Foss, and guides to Linux all over

Especially for Linux Mint (Similar to Windows), Pop!_OS (Similar to MacOS), and Bazzite (Gaming-Productivity Distro, Similar to SteamOS)

The latter 2 work out of the box for gaming if that's your thing

You got this. Learn little by little each day and engage with community as much as you can. Maybe join some Voyager for Lemmy, Bluesky, Discord, etc communities