I started using Linux in addition to Windows years ago, but I switched full-time because I found that Linux actually runs faster on the same machine hardware, and if you have a stable distro it actually breaks things less often.

I’ve had windows go to do it’s update, and sit on the update screen for ages, never seeming to finish. No process bar, nothing, just that stupid screen saying “we’re doing updating, thanks for waiting” or whatever (cycling through several messages without saying what it’s doing, is it stuck?) I would have to hard reset my windows machine when it did that.

And windows has so much stuff running in the background, either pre installed things running or who knows what services. I didn’t use edge or IE but they would still be running there in the background in task manager.

Not to mention the other issues like having to go find software I wanted to download, hunting for a real, valid, non-virus link to download, then run an installer, and click click click through the installer. Oh it needs some version of Microsoft visual C++ runtime that it didn’t include automatically? Good luck finding the right vcredist to install to make it work, you’re on your own.

Linux has none of that nonsense.

You want to update? You either click the button or type the command, put in your password, it gives you a list of exactly what it’s going to update. You confirm yes and it goes and giving you a progress bar and tells you what it’s doing each step of the way. No guessing if it’s stuck or broken. If it does break, it gives you an error message you can actually Google for a result for.

You want to install new software? For most of what I’ve wanted, I can just go to the distro’s software repository and download things directly from a trusted source. The builds are signed and verified so I can trust they’re real and not a virus rather than having to go searching online. All dependencies are also automatically installed with the correct versions to make everything just work.

And there are no installers, you click the buttons to install and what you want installs with no extra stupid menus or anything, if you want to install 10 things in one go you can.

Also there are standard paths for everything, you can pretty much Google “Linux how to” and you’ll get sane results for most distro’s.

And games run faster on Linux with less overhead from background things competing, there’s no background update crap kicking in to nuke your game performance. I’ve been running steam and the free epic games stuff on Linux full-time and Linux only for probably 5 years and I’ve had minimal issues, VR also works. Sure there may be some setup involved but there are many guides and instructions out there, and it mostly amounts to installing things and maybe a little bit of configuration.

Which, on Windows you still often need to install things to get stuff to work anyways, so really the argument that windows “just works” has worn a little thin with me. I’d believe you if you told me that a Mac just works, I’ve not used one.

I’ve used Windows for decades, I know that “just works” is a lie. It works no better than Linux imo, and depending on distro, some Linux just works better than Windows.

From my decade of Linux I would suggest: Debian or Ubuntu for a rock solid stable distro. Probably go Ubuntu since you’ll find way more help easily Googleable, but snap causes some difficulties.

Garuda is my current Arch based distro, so far no breakage after about 2 years of use, great for gaming. Would not recommend arch based for your first foray, I ran archlinux itself for about 6 years but it would break from time to time (fixable, but still not beginner friendly.)