I get the feeling that Lemmy has a relatively higher concentration of Linux users. I’m preparing to move over to Linux when I build my new computer. I already put Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on one of my old laptops and I like it quite a bit. I figure that since I’ve been wanting to switch over for years, I should just do it. The games were the thing holding me back, and Proton seems to have taken care of that(I don’t really play multiplayer games that require anticheat… I’m a singleplayer kind of girl).
For me, anyway, I want to switch because Windows has been creeping me out with its telemetry. Windows 11 looks lousy, and I’d have to jump through some hoops to get my old hardware on 11, anyway.
I’ve been using linux almost exclusively since somewhere around 2008 or so. The main thing is to ensure that you are still able to do what you want to do with your computer, regardless of the OS. You may have to seek out some alternatives to programs that you’re currently using, but there’s a pretty good chance that there’s something available. Check out the available software on the Mint install you currently have, and check out protondb to see if the games you’re interested in are compatible. I’d recommend creating a backup of your current system before you do anything just in case you need to revert back.
On a distro like Mint, I’ve never (or at least very rarely) run into any issues outside of NVIDIA drivers, and even that isn’t too bad given that it’s a slower-moving distro and Cinnamon isn’t using Wayland anyway. I put Mint on my parents’ computer since it ended up being easier for them than Windows was. That doesn’t mean that you won’t have any issues, but Mint is pretty easy to use, and they have a reasonably active forum for asking for help.
For what it’s worth, Windows 11 is pretty lousy. You get ads shoved everywhere they can shove them, and their telemetry is pretty invasive, imo. That’s not even mentioning their future plans where everyone gets pushed to their cloud services. If you have any questions, please ask and I’ll answer as best I can.