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.

For games it’s really great unless that game you’re looking for has kernel-level anticheat. You can check ProtonDB for Steam games, Lutris for other platforms. If you prefer single-player games mostly like me, you won’t have much of a problem.

For music, there are software like Ardour and LMMS. For video editing, you can check KDEnlive.

Before switching, I suggest you to try at least a couple different distros on a virtual machine, better if you have a separate laptop to try things. PopOS is great. You can also check Linux Mint, Bazzite and openSUSE Leap.

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.

Be prepared to ditch a few apps when switching to Linux! Most games work great, but those sneaky, spyware-heavy ones? Not so much. (/me looks at GTA Online & League.)

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

expect pain and start of a new hobby.

Things that I would tell to younger me before I switched to GNU/Linux:

0. GNU/Linux is an excellent and easy operating system to use as a replacement to Windows for laptops or computers. It depends on distro too, I talk at least about begginer-friendly distros like Mint, Trisquel.
1. GNU/ Linux is easy to install, at least begginer-friendly distros.
2. As a begginer, start with a Debian/Ubuntu based distro. Because there is a lot of support, many software in repositories (apt), many tutorials on internet, many .deb software to download online. After you get used to it, you can try rpm distros (which run .rpm software, like Fedora) or even other types of distros.
3. Using terminal, at least for basic commands, is really easy. Like sudo apt update/upgrade/remove/purge, chmod +x [file].
4. You can use Linux even without terminal (what I said above can be made through a package manager interface which is already installed on most distros, or using ‘right click-properties’ for file permissions).
5. There are a lot of great replacements for Windows-only programs (browsers, office, text editors, photo and video viewer etc.).
6. You can run Windows software on Linux (using Wine), if you really need to.
7. Gaming can be made on Linux (a lot of native games, plus Steam offers Proton to run Windows games on Linux). You can verify how well games work using this website: www.protondb.com
8. There is not a black-and-white situation. You don’t have to quit Windows forever. You can keep it in dual boot and use it only when you need software that doesn’t work on Linux. For example, a Windows game that is running bad on Proton in Linux.
9. There are a lot of desktop environments (Gnome, Mate, KDE, Cinnamon, LXQt etc.), so your system can look how you want to. My favourite ones are Cinnamon and Mate.
10. You will feel great that you use a free and open source system and support small players in this area, instead of using a monopolistic closed system.
11. People will think you are a really advanced programmer, tech person (quite funny).

Let’s talk about disadvantages now:

1. Changing anything, including an operating system, is intimidating. You will think you will never get used to the new system, software, its way of installing apps etc. But you will, quite fast.

2. Some Windows apps may not work, or work bad. It didn’t happen to me, but I am quite sure it might happen. So you better make some tests of Windows apps on Linux before.

3. If you choose automatic partitioning when installing the distro, it might do it in an inconvenient way. Let’s say you have 960 GB SSD. Choosing automatic partitioning might allocate only 25 GB for system, and the rest (900 GB) for home partition. And it’s very frustrating, because apps install (using sudo apt install ‘app’) in system partition, not home. So always use manual partitioning and put a lot of size for system (/). It can be intimidating, but you find tutorials online.

That’s all I can think of. Enjoy your journey in Linux world!

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.

Don’t switch your OS first switch your apps to cross platform apps first that work on both Linux and Windows for all your major tasks. Then after you feel good about it then switch to Linux and switch everything no dual boot for at least 6 months or you will switch at the slightest roadblock vs just troubleshooting like you would do if you ran into a roadblock on windows.

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.

Something akin to what the Jews felt when they were liberated from the camps.

I think you should try dual booting or try Linux in a virtual box just to check that you can do your work on Linux and if you can’t then you know the answer.

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.

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.