Linux

Jump the ship, I did 6 years ago, before even proton was a thing when games worked witha lot of thinkering.

Nowdays you habe so many great games working you won't mind a couple of games not working because of all the other playable games.

should I completely jumpship to linux when windows 10 ends support

Nah, there's no need to wait.

When I left for Linux I had to give up League of Legends. I sucked it up, & after a month, I was fine without it & it was better since I knew it wouldn’t be worth the effort even trying to install it on Linux.

Why wait? Start using Linux friendly software in your day to day workflows. Then start to dual boot Linux with your current system and start using it more and more. By the time windows 10 reaches EOL you will know if you still need a Windows install or not.

I’ve been a dual / triple / god knows how many OS booted since the 90’s.

Windows has gotten into bad habits lately - it’s not staying in its lane. Meaning it hasn’t respected other boot partitions for a long time, and recently there seems to be a lot of people having problems with windows nuking their linux installs.

My strong recommendation is to buy a second hard drive if you dual boot. Then windows can be “over there” - I’ve never had a problem dedicating ssds to the OS. My second recommendation is to do this now, why wait until you’re forced into something? You’ve got a year to learn Linux and get comfortable with it.

The longer you wait, the more distros we'll have to argue about when you ask for suggestions

Why wait? Dual boot, get cozy, still have the ability to go back to Windows if needed, find alternative apps, and soon enough, you won't need the Windows partition :) Worked for my partner, my brother, and myself

I switched a year or so ago and never looked back. there will be issues you need to overcome though. so better start with dualboot before windows 10 is eol

Start using it now in a VM. Linux has gotten very user friendly over the years but it's still a completely different system with different design philosophies. Ease into it now and test the water with different distros

You should set up dual boot now so you don’t get surprised by differences when support ends and you feel the need to switch to an ltsc sku or use Linux.

Don’t wait, prepare!

Keep a hold of windows for a little while so that if something critical comes up that you can’t figure out you have a fallback.

Dualboot definitely, don't belive anything other than that, taking slow the only good way

I jumped ship a month ago. Never really used Linux outside of some small school projects.

And my god have I had lots of issues with stuff that didn't work or it was missing some packages that I had no idea how to get.

I have a colleague that have used Linux for +10-20 years. So having somebody to ask for help is very valuable!

But all the games I normally play is working so I don't regret jumping ship.

Why wait? There's no need for Windows, unless you're running some super-specialized app. The new versions of Windows already have telemetry and privacy issues, so why just go with minimal security options that MS is selling you? You can do almost everything in Linux just as well, if not better, than Windows does at this point. Start with Linux Mint, which is the most Windows-y distribution and you should be golden.

Something I did that helped make the jump was buying a separate drive to put linux on and removing my windows drive. It makes the act of switching back to windows take more effort, but didn't remove the possibility altogether.

I also got an enclosure for my M.2 and can use the windows drive as a super fast thumb drive and use that to transfer the files from the windows drive that I care to keep on linux. (none of it is critical, not worth doing proper back ups)

I would almost recommend GPU passthrough if you have a dual GPU system and can figure it out. It definitely takes a bit of tinkering, but I like the results: I now have both a Windows 10 (maybe will become 11, maybe 11 LTSC) and a Hackintosh VM. It's not as good if you only have one graphics card, through. If you're up for it, I used this tutorial. If it's an AMD card, though, make sure to check my issue for any steps relating to that.

As for dual boot, get a second drive if you can. I find it helps me avoid a lot of the misery, although I very rarely actually boot up Windows anymore - just a VM if I really have to (which I do for MATLAB because my university is ridiculous and I figure if I'm going to use an evil programming language, I might as well use it in an isolated, evil environment).

If you switch to single boot Linux you can always install Windows in a virtual machine later in a pinch.

Every sane person will recommend Linux only. However not everyone can use it. WMs decrease performance so you'll need good hardware. Dualboot may delete one of your OSes. It's a matter of if it's worth it or not. I personally don't see a problem with running Windows only for gaming. Though if you're paranoid about privacy then it may not be a good idea if your Linux partition is not encrypted (if there are backdoors, someone can mount your Linux partition remotely and read it etc etc). If you still want to keep Windows, buy a second physical drive to avoid the OS deletion risk.

You can always consider the experience of using Linux as a "game" itself and DU ET NAO!

...no really. Do it.

Jump ship. Just know, windows will pull you back in, especially if you work in corporate/office work. I was doing my work from home on Linux for two years straight, then my work mandated windows 11 for everyone. It’s been a nightmare. I just want my xfce!

As long as you have your windows license key you can change your mind later so really you can do whatever. I'd recommend giving 100% linux a try if that seems fun. Obviously you're gonna want to back up any interesting files that you have on windows either way.

Doesn't hurt to try. I weened myself off Windows by using linux every single day and fiddling around for a few hours. Eventually it just clicked and i very rarely boot up Windows nowadays for apps that will not run on linux. Good luck!

My experience : jump ships. Dual-boot is unpractical. I dual-booted my PC at first, but that makes you remain on what's comfortable, and that's windows. Swallow the hard pill and leave windows behind. If you're already working mostly with OSS software (surf with Firefox, use LibreOffice, etc) than it's not that hard.

I tried dual-booting Win10 and Arch for a few months. It was problematic.

I had to set the clock every time I switched because one expected the hardware clock to use UTC time and the other expected local time.

NTFS on Linux is not good. The driver works, but there are fundamental differences between NTFS and Unix-like filesystems that makes cooperation difficult (e.g. NTFS uses ACLs instead of the user/group ownership and user/group/others permissions of Unix). Windows also places additional restrictions on the filesystem (e.g. NTFS supports file names that contain :, Windows doesn't) that can completely bork the volume if violated.

But the worst offender, and what made me nuke Windows entirely, is Windows Update. It completely fucked up the boot partition, deleted the bootloader, then died and left Windows unusable.

These are all issues that can be solved, if you know how to solve them. My advice is to go cold turkey and delete Windows from your life.

Better just start dual booting. If you begin to use Windows less and less, you can throw away that Windows partition and expand your Linux partition.

No better way to learn and get used to it than ripping off the bandage and being forced to deal with it. That's what I did. Been Windows-free for ten years. If you still have a Windows partition around, it may be too tempting to just go back to it when things get a bit hairy.

As far as games, yeah, it sucks that I can't play some games, but I've filled that time with more productive hobbies. I can program C and C++ now, self taught on Linux.

But the more people that jump ship, the more developers will target Linux, so it's just a matter of time now before you can play anything again. It's definitely a 1000x better environment now than when I switched back then.

All advice here seems to focus on linux, but I'd say rip that bandaid off first. Go cold turkey on roblox. That shit is the worst cancer to come out of something that was fun initially.

Not in four months to a year. Yesterday. Learn to control your impulses first and the rest will fall into place, whichever way you go.

You'll never be wrong by making it dual boot - if you won't need Windows, hooray, but if you will - it's still there, always has been.

If you need Windows for some applications (e.g. Fusion, Call of Duty, etc.), dual boot it , but only the LTSC versions of it. Here are the links for the LTSC versions of Windows. I know that they're not from the official source, but I checked them and the checksums match. Otherwise, use Linux.

Doo Eeeet, Doo EEeet Now!!!

Seriously though, I vote VM under linux. Spin it up for whatever you need, use it less and less, no regrets...

Eh, you've already dual booted and "used linux more and more," unless you can think of a reason why you'd really need windows, and since you're already comfortable with linux, you might as well switch fully if you think you're ready.

Using Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) and a fast USB thumbdrive, such as Kingston DataTraveler Max - https://www.storagereview.com/review/kingston-datatraveler-max-review, you can make a "Windows To Go" installation.

Now you have a Windows install that you can boot directly from the thumbdrive when the need arise.
Perfect for booting up if your bios can't updated directly from the usb drive and forces you into Windows, or to run that one software you can't replace just yet and that refuses your attempts to run with wine.

Just make sure that it's an ssd usb thumbdrive or it's gonna be too slow to be any use.