You can always consider the experience of using Linux as a "game" itself and DU ET NAO!

...no really. Do it.

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.

You should set up dual boot now so you don’t get surprised by differences when support ends and you feel the need to switch to an ltsc sku or use Linux.

Don’t wait, prepare!

Keep a hold of windows for a little while so that if something critical comes up that you can’t figure out you have a fallback.

should I completely jumpship to linux when windows 10 ends support

Nah, there's no need to wait.

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.

I’ve been a dual / triple / god knows how many OS booted since the 90’s.

Windows has gotten into bad habits lately - it’s not staying in its lane. Meaning it hasn’t respected other boot partitions for a long time, and recently there seems to be a lot of people having problems with windows nuking their linux installs.

My strong recommendation is to buy a second hard drive if you dual boot. Then windows can be “over there” - I’ve never had a problem dedicating ssds to the OS. My second recommendation is to do this now, why wait until you’re forced into something? You’ve got a year to learn Linux and get comfortable with it.

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.

The longer you wait, the more distros we'll have to argue about when you ask for suggestions

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...

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!

Jump the ship, I did 6 years ago, before even proton was a thing when games worked witha lot of thinkering.

Nowdays you habe so many great games working you won't mind a couple of games not working because of all the other playable games.

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

Why wait? Start using Linux friendly software in your day to day workflows. Then start to dual boot Linux with your current system and start using it more and more. By the time windows 10 reaches EOL you will know if you still need a Windows install or not.

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.

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.

I wish I could switch to Linux but sadly I can't (one of the main things I use a computer for won't work on Linux) so I'll be using windows 10 beyond eol and forever into the foreseeable future and I don't see native instruments making a Linux version any time soon. I email them at least once a year asking about it in the hope they one day fucking do it!

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?

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

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.

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.