The first thing that you would have yourself is: Do you use any Windows-specific prgrams? Things such as Adobe Suite, the desktop version of MS 360 and if you do, how dependant are you on those. If you are then I’d say stick to Windows because not onluly does Windows programs run better on Windows (duh), making them run on Linux is a chore and very complicated, and that is on top of learning a whole new way of doing things. If you play games, well, unless you know thst your games run on Linux, I’d stay on Windows for now but if you mainly live in a web browser, you won’t have to worry.

If you don’t, the next question is that are willing to discard most of your knowledge regarding using a computer? Linux is altogether a different way of doing things than Windows, it’s closer to MacOS actually, but only a little bit. Linix does things its own way and is not interested in imitating other OSes. Some conceptual things will be different. For example, you don’t normally install programsby finding an install file on the internet, you do it through your appstore, or that tje file system is very different to Windows.

You will have much control over your system, but with power comes responsibility. It’s up to you to run the updates if necessary, it’s up to you to reach out if there’s a problem, and you’d have to keep in mind that often supporters are volunteers, not paid employees, make of that what you will.

Just like Windows, expect stuff to go wrong from time to time, not often, but sometimes you might have a light or something that only comes with Windows drivers.

I’d recommend that you learn a little bit of commandline. Yes it looks scary, and actually for daily use you might even get away with opening a terminal at all, but it’s still an useful thing to know, especially on Linux. Think of it as a direct way of talking to your computer.

If all that doesn’t deter you, come aboard! We hope that you’re have a very good time here, and we think that with some tinkering, you’d have a much better time here than on Windows. You can either jump head first or try Linux in a virtual machine. In time you’ll realise that for the most part distros are not that important, but for now, you could go with either Ubuntu or Pop!OS for a more MacOS vibe, or Linux Mint for a more traditional Windows vibe. Just download the iso, stick it in a virtual (or actual) machine and browse around! See if the programs that you need is there, if not then if you can get around it, try it out. Especially if you doing this on bare metal, see if everything works (keyboard shortcuts, trackpads, fingerprint reader…). Fingerprint reader are perhaps the trickiest, other stuff for the most part just works, but just test around.

Or you can just ignore everything I said and install Arch 🐧