Given that Windows 11 won't support your device, Linux may be your only option for a supported OS.

Linux probably wouldn't make your games any faster, but it could make the OS feel snappier.

Reasons to switch:

• you hate Windows
• you like to customize stuff
• you're curious about Linux
• you don't play many MP games
• you tend to leave a ton of stuff open, which makes things run slowly
• saving 40GB or so of space means the world to you (Linux is pretty lean)

Reasons not to switch:

• you need Windows-specific software, like Adobe stuff or games w/ anti-cheat
• you're not interested in tinkering at all, and having any minor issue would frustrate you
• you want the best possible performance for games

Linux is better at memory and task management, generally speaking, but performance in specific apps depends a ton on the specific app, from being slightly better to being noticeable worse.

As for which Linux distro to go with, I hear good things about Linux Mint, though I don't use it myself. But honestly, look at the most popular distros and find one that looks cool to you, they're all pretty good. Ones to check out are:

• Debian (or Linux Mint Debian Edition) - ol' reliable, may have some issues on newer games
• Fedora - tries to be close to bleeding edge, without as many sharp edges
• Bazzite - gaming focus, tries to imitate Steam OS
• openSUSE Tumbleweed - my personal daily driver, though I generally don't recommend it for new users since there's not a huge community to find help

There are tons more great ones. If you list your must-have apps/games, maybe someone can give a better recommendation, though honestly most distros are similar enough that if it works on one, it'll work anywhere.

Yes, from my personal experience:

It'll be a lot faster.

Edit: there's ollama-cuda on the repos and alpaca-ai on the AUR, but I changed from the self managed to use the local ollama server. For games, there's lutris, wine-cachyos, proton-cachyos, dxvk-mingw-git and vkd3d-proton-mingw-git all on the repos, so dxvk and vkd3d (the translation layers from directx to vulkan) are updated when the system is updated, but need to be installed with the provided scripts to work automagically after that.

Your biggest issue is going to be dealing with multiple partitions, unless you can find another boot disk, because your disk is pretty full. I would strongly recommend getting a second disk, unless you are willing to delete a lot of (presumably) game executables.

It is also a good idea to have a relatively smaller Linux partition, and point your Steam library and other documents to a separate data partition. My 1TB nvme has 150MB EFI FAT32 partition, a 100GB ext4 root partition (Linux is installed here), and the remaining ~900GB as my ext4 data partition. This way, if you choose to install a different Linux, or blow away your root partition, you can relink your Steam/Music/Video Libraries and local AI models, and get up and running again very quickly.

Outside of the disk, my top recommendation is to archive your active steam games, so you can restore them into Linux without fully re-downloading later. Additionally, unless your games are in Steam Cloud, you will also have a bit of a time restoring save files to the new OS, as the file paths will be different than you are used to on Windows.

My second recommendation is to ensure secure boot is disabled in your BIOS; there are currently known issues with driver signing with the NVIDIA driver.

Finally, assuming you’re on a Ubuntu-based distro like Mint, ensure you install Steam from the .deb or apt package, not the flatpak. On Mint, “Install Steam” is available right in the start menu.

You can bypass the TPM requirements for windows using Rufus to get Windows 11. There are tons of videos on how to do that.

That being said, I use Linux as a daily driver and love it. You can always test it out on a USB and decide if you want to install it. It won't run games well from a USB, but it at least will allow you to see what you like.

Either way good luck with your adventure and if you have questions this community is spectacular and really likes to help people!

Lots of mention of dual booting- I recommend getting an e-waste tier 256gb SATA SSD for your first Linux install if you just want to try it out.

No one wants those old drives because they are small but they are plenty quick and you only need 15 to 30 gigs for most distros.

Just dual boot. Boot in to Linux only for a week or two, if it's working for your needs keep it. If not, delete the partition and it's like nothing ever happened.

Switch when Microsoft ads, bloat, telemetry and reboots starts to test your sanity. Didn't switch if everything seems fine.

64 GB DDR3, interesting. That's a lot for that old tech.

i cut my teeth on linux mint with cinnamon before moving to garuda dragonized. it was my daily driver for the last four years, then i switched to proxmox and just run everything on VMs 🤷

lots of resources and documentation available for mint, but it's pretty turnkey. best advice i'd give to a newfriend is make sure you read any articles or documentation start to finish, instead of trying to follow along. also, employ good backups practice: learn what timeshift/snappy is, how it works, and how to use it.

taking a backup before making big changes has saved my ass more than once

Other people have given you good responses about switching so I'll give some distro recommendations:

1. Bazzite. This is what I use on fairly similar hardware. Looks like you've got a v1 or v2 chip as it's still DDR3, I'm on an E5-2680v2 and it works great under Linux while Windows 10 just caused it to freeze up so much by the end. All the background updates and indexing and whatever else were such resource hogs. The NVIDIA Bazzite iso also includes the official drivers out of the box, which many other distros don't (looking at you Linux Mint!!). It's designed to be super easy for gamers newly switching from Windows, with Steam pre-installed and everything just ready to go.
2. CachyOS. I don't have personal experience with it, but I know it also includes the official NVIDIA drivers out of the box, and it's designed as a gaming distro first and foremost as well.
3. Nobara. Another gaming distro, it also includes the NVIDIA drivers and is ready to go. It's made by a dev known as Glorious Eggroll who is well respected in the linux gaming community.

The reason I recommend distros that have the official NVIDIA drivers OOTB is that they work much, much better than the Noveau open source driver that most traditional distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora) include. The offical drivers also have a steep learning curve for a new Linux user to install themselves, it's nowhere near as simple as installing them on Windows.

As long as you back up your data, experiment to find what you want. If you have an empty spare drive, try out the different options there. It's been a month since I moved to Bazzite. My plan was to try Mint and Bazzite while also keeping a Windows 10 ISO in my boot drive (Ventoy will allow you to have as many ISO in your USB stick). If things get too difficult, I could always go back to Windows 10. But using Bazzite has been a breeze, I decided I didn't even need Mint. Every time I think I need to open up the terminal for any issues, I find that the solution doesn't require it.

Try it! You can always go back.

If you can find another HDD or SSD then you can keep your windows drive full of games intact.

I dual booted for years (for gaming) and as of now haven't used a non-linux PC for more than a decade at home or professionally.

I recommend starting with either Fedora or Ubuntu as they're among the most popular and have a large community for support.

Set yourself a goal on Linux, even if it's just "check my email" or whatever. Rinse, repeat.

1. Load onto USB thumb drive and boot into it to see if you like the outline feel. Try different ones (Debian is good)
2. Dual boot If you like outline feel from USB drive
3. Give it a month as your daily driver
4. Consider the Chris Titus option of thinned down windows.

I'm using Debian on my machine and it just works.