probably a lifetime of trouble shooting and asking the internet if there’s a linux equivalent of insert name software available.

Don’t switch based on hype.

Put your chosen distro on a USB pen and boot from that. Try to do the activities you usually do, see if it works for you.

If you feel comfortable, make the switch. If you have any doubts, get a second disk and install Linux in it so you can have a fall back plan.

Upon switching, what should I expect to change?

Many things are very similar on Linux compared to Windows (e.g. Browsing, Steam). One big difference is that people prefer using package managers to install software (instead of downloading and installing it manually).

I’m considering Pop!_OS seeing as its praised for its compatibility and easy switching.

Pop!_OS is a nice distro and it should work well for you if you like the UI. There also many other good distros if you want to play around a bit. You can easily test them using a Live ISO.

What’s the situation with gaming look like? I know gaming on Linux has been a HIGHLY discussed topic for a while, is it easy to play any (non triple-A) steam game? I’m nowhere near involved in computer science, I’d just consider myself more stubborn than most end-users so I can persevere through some basic problems.

I’d say that you can expect almost all games to work. The main exception are games with anti-cheat that decide not to support Linux. In my case, there has only been one game in the last two years that didn’t work (War Thunder crashes a lot more than on Windows). Playing AAA games is generally not an issue. You can check https://www.protondb.com/ for specific games.

Your computer to run faster? 😁

I’m not that much of a gamer, but ask your favorite search engine for winedb and protondb for details about game compatibility.

Music production is the only reason I still have a Windows installation on dual boot. My Ableton install and stack of VSTs is holding me back.

You definitely can do music production on Linux though. Bitwig is good and works natively.

I’ve been on pop!_os consistently for… 3 and a bit years now? some distro hopping before then

What you should expect to change… well other than the obvious like the UI and such… chances are you’ll need a decent bit of different software than on windows, im assuming you looked into alternatives for the software you use, or if it simply just runs, so im not gonna list a bunch of stuff here :3.

Tech support online is mostly gonna be through terminal commands, which actually makes it way less painless imo since you can just copy-paste stuff instead of navigating though a bunch of interfaces.

Installing apps is different since you’ll often find multiple packages for the same thing, and have to decide between .deb or flatpak etc.

All of that seems like fairly obvious stuff you’d find along the way to the process of looking into switching to linux tbh, but I can’t think of much that’d be a major shock otherwise lol

In terms of gaming, I’ve had no major issues :3… some minor ones that were easy enough to troubleshoot did occur tho. Generally just checking out protonDB to see what people are saying in terms of compatibility is good, but basically 90% of what doesn’t run now are games with kernel level anti-cheats

This is a weird one, but read up on folder structures. If you’ve used MacOS at all then the logic is very similar. However if you’re coming from a pure windows background then it can get confusing figuring out where everything gets put when you install applications or need to make changes to config files.

The Pop desktop environment and search works well the vast majority of the time but it’s handy to know how to find you’re way around when you hit a roadblock.

Upon switching, what should I expect to change?

Your sexual characteristics shall grow and turn bright red, marking you as an individual that’s ready to reproduce.

Some times you may need to install a few extra stuff to get a game to run properly, other times you may see a few visual glitches like a pop-up menu not rendering properly, but you’re unlikely to find any game that just can’t run on Linux unless the devs intentionally don’t want people to play it on Linux.

Check protondb for general compatibility of any games you play.

For gaming and browsing, you should have a very similar if not the exact same experience on Linux save for a few cases.

Most browser stuff just works, no real issues with anything in browser in my experience over the last 2 years or so since I switched. Only thing I’ve noticed is some streaming platforms dont allow you to stream in full HD like Hulu for whatever reason, likely piracy concerns. I’m sure theres other minor things too that I may have missed over the years but nothing that really made a difference.

For gaming, aside from multiplayer games with anticheat, its been great. I haven’t had any issues with playing games in my library. Proton is fantastic for steam games and from what I’ve heard, lutris is great as well.

I’m a musician/artist and Linux has been a bad experience for me with music production unfortunately. Between most VSTs not working for me even with yabridge, things would crash, not work at all or would load but then crash in the middle of production. I actually used Reaper and was running PopOS, (great daw BTW, good choice) and while Reaper itself was great, most things, even native Linux VST didn’t work for me. I hope your experience is better than mine but I ended up building a 3rd machine just for music production running Windows 10 with no internet access. I also had Windows only VSTs that I spent a considerable amount of money on so that was also another big thing for me.

Aside from music production, other creative workflows like photo editing have been good with Krita. I’ve heard good things about kdenlive, and davinci resolve Ive heard is good on Linux as well. Ive used davinci resolve myself on windows and its a good video editing software IMO.

The popshop kinda sucks. I went to kubuntu recently just for ease of use and not being so tied in to PopOS’s weird system. I wasn’t able to do simple things like change the file manager without it breaking a ton of shit, even after editing configs. If you dont need to mess around with stuff like that, PopOS is good.

All in all, I’m glad I switched from Windows.

No matter what distro you choose, expect a learning curve. Depending on your usage it can be minor or significant. You may find a simple task doesn’t work as you expect in Linux and it’s time consuming to figure it out. If you run Windows in a virtual machine on Linux or set up a dual boot system you can switch back and get the task done easily, and figure out how things work at your leisure.

When I first switched I went back to Windows a couple of times a week for simple tasks that I didn’t know how to complete in Linux. (It usually was an issue with figuring out a new application and rarely had anything to do with the OS itself.) After a couple of months I found I was wasn’t using Windows much, and in less than a year I was able to delete the Windows partition.

I hope you don’t care about functional HDR support, nor having access to the Nvidia Control Panel or Nvidia App (So no 3D Settings, no Shadowplay, no RTX HDR). Two major reasons why I’m sticking with Windows for now.

People have already mentioned ProtonDB for games. Another website you can use for alternative versions of software is https://osalt.com/

LLMs are useful when dealing with linux. Linux works different so there is learning curve esp if you want to get most out of it.

PopOS is a decent choice, however COSMIC is in late alpha with that being said it does work overall. I would not advise 22.04 at this point.

You can install classic GNOME also.

I’m using areweanticheatyet.com more than ProtonDB to check if games are working as most issues I’ve encountered are due to anticheat not working on Linux. Apart from these most games just works without much tinkering.