Linux

So, how deep does the "similar to Windows" needs to go? Are you thinking in terms of ease of use, things that works out of the box, something that looks similar to Windows?

In terms of look and feel, I'd recommend something based on KDE. KDE out of the box looks a lot like Windows (in fact, Windows 11 has some stuff that looks like it's been ripped off KDE) Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Manjaro and Mint all have KDE versions you can install. I think Cinnamon also looks a fair bit like Windows. Although I wouldn't exactly rule out other desktops just yet - maybe you'll quickly realize hey, that other desktop I tried does look and function pretty neatly for my needs and you won't feel like you need something that looks like Windows.

In terms of tutorials and being able to look things up online, Ubuntu and Manjaro tends to be the two most popular and therefore most documented. pop_OS! is also fairly popular and they do a good job at making Linux accessible for newcomers, but it's based on Gnome so the experience will be different.

My personal advice is get VirtualBox, pick a few distros and try them out. You won't exactly be able to game on them, or if you do, you'll probably be limited to more lightweight games. But that should be plenty enough to install Discord, OBS, Steam and give a few distros a try. You can expect real world performance to mostly feel more responsive than Windows, and for games you can expect similar or maybe 5-10% lower performance in most cases. So don't look too much at how fast it runs in a VM - VMs are fantastic piece of technology (and I actually game in one with a VFIO setup, but don't bother just yet it's a whole rabbithole), but especially under VirtualBox or VMware you're not going to get the full performance.

Try a bunch of distros, try a few of the main Desktop Environments (DEs), see what you like, see what you dislike. Gnome on Ubuntu will be very different than Gnome on Fedora. Don't rule out a distro because the DE, and don't rule out a DE because of a distro. You can install as many as you want in VirtualBox, so take your time to get a feel of what you like and dislike and go from there. Once you've made your choice, you can partition your disk and keep Windows around if you want to have that safety net. Sometimes there's that one game that just won't work in Linux, and you can reboot to Windows to play it. I started this way, and found myself rebooting to Windows less and less until I reached a point where I was actively avoiding it and willing to make sacrifices just to avoid it because Linux had become my primary OS. If you have 2-3 distros you want to try, nothing stops you from installing all of them on hardware as well, they'll happily cohabitate for the most part. Spend a day in Ubuntu, spend another day in Manjaro. Get a feel of which one has less friction for you.

In the end, Linux is Linux. Some distros ships everything you need for gaming out of the box and are easier to set up, but ultimately, Linux is Linux, you can (with some effort) get anything that runs on one distro on another distro. Heck, on ArchLinux land, we have a whole bunch of Ubuntu-patched packages in the AUR to bring in some of Ubuntu's modifications in.

Speaking of ArchLinux. It's a pretty good distro, it's also become a bit of a meme distro. Don't feel like you have to jump in all the way and get into ArchLinux, Gentoo, VoidLinux, Alpine, etc. You can if you want - honestly, if you really want to dive in deep and learn Linux from the ground up they will get you there, but beware that the learning curve on that will be steep. Those distros are aimed at more advanced users that want to control every aspect of their system in great detail. There's no shame using a normie distro like Ubuntu or Fedora. Those are made to just kinda work and be reliable, whereas the ArchLinux installer is basically "here's a command line, install what you want, good luck have fun".

You don't have to "commit" to a distro. For some it becomes a bit of a religion, but it's perfectly normal to hop around distros a bit before you find the one that clicks with you. That's why there's so many of them: different goals for different people and different minds. I started with Ubuntu in 2007, ran to Debian around 2010 when they introduced Unity and I didn't like it, wasn't a fan of Debian either, ended up breaking it with Debian Sid, went to Fedora for a bit, and back to Ubuntu with a different DE before I felt like I had enough and wanted something I had more control over, and that's when I switched to Arch and stayed on Arch to this day. Meanwhile my fiancée put Arch on her laptop but increasingly feels like it's too much maintenance for her and wants a laptop that just kinda works to run Chromium and VSCode. So she might end up just switching to Ubuntu. That's perfectly fine! The computer should work for you, you shouldn't work for the computer.

If you end up not liking Linux, that's fine too! Most of us here swear by it, but maybe Windows just happens to be the best operating system for you, just like for some people that's macOS.

With that, good luck, hope you enjoy your Linux experience and ask questions. Lemmy is a great place to ask for help, there's also lots of still very active IRC channels on libera.chat, and there's some Discord servers too if that's your thing.