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.

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

I hope you don’t care about functional HDR support, nor having access to the Nvidia Control Panel or Nvidia App (So no 3D Settings, no Shadowplay, no RTX HDR). Two major reasons why I’m sticking with Windows for now.

I’ve been on pop!_os consistently for… 3 and a bit years now? some distro hopping before then

What you should expect to change… well other than the obvious like the UI and such… chances are you’ll need a decent bit of different software than on windows, im assuming you looked into alternatives for the software you use, or if it simply just runs, so im not gonna list a bunch of stuff here :3.

Tech support online is mostly gonna be through terminal commands, which actually makes it way less painless imo since you can just copy-paste stuff instead of navigating though a bunch of interfaces.

Installing apps is different since you’ll often find multiple packages for the same thing, and have to decide between .deb or flatpak etc.

All of that seems like fairly obvious stuff you’d find along the way to the process of looking into switching to linux tbh, but I can’t think of much that’d be a major shock otherwise lol

In terms of gaming, I’ve had no major issues :3… some minor ones that were easy enough to troubleshoot did occur tho. Generally just checking out protonDB to see what people are saying in terms of compatibility is good, but basically 90% of what doesn’t run now are games with kernel level anti-cheats

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.

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.

Your computer to run faster? 😁

I’m not that much of a gamer, but ask your favorite search engine for winedb and protondb for details about game compatibility.

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.

Some times you may need to install a few extra stuff to get a game to run properly, other times you may see a few visual glitches like a pop-up menu not rendering properly, but you’re unlikely to find any game that just can’t run on Linux unless the devs intentionally don’t want people to play it on Linux.

Check protondb for general compatibility of any games you play.

People have already mentioned ProtonDB for games. Another website you can use for alternative versions of software is https://osalt.com/

This is a weird one, but read up on folder structures. If you’ve used MacOS at all then the logic is very similar. However if you’re coming from a pure windows background then it can get confusing figuring out where everything gets put when you install applications or need to make changes to config files.

The Pop desktop environment and search works well the vast majority of the time but it’s handy to know how to find you’re way around when you hit a roadblock.

Never assume Linux works like Windows. You’ll be confused.

You also do not have to use Pop because it is generally praised for its easiness. There are a few other good and easy to use distros out there, like Fedora, Mint or openSUSE.

There are also a few DEs out there, with the two most popular ones being KDE Plasma and GNOME

If you want to use KDE, I recommend you try out Fedora’s new KDE version.

While not all, you also should know a few very commonly used commands to use in the terminal and maybe some basic troubleshooting skills. You don’t need to be using the terminal all the time, if at all. Some common stuff is pretty much doable with a GUI nowadays and you’ll probably be installing your applications through the DEs builtin software center. Pop uses a customized GNOME, so you’ll be using the GNOME Software Center. KDE has Discover.

Since you do game, I suggest you check out ProtonDB. This is a database of rankings of games that work with Proton (Wine) and some even natively. If you play games from Epic, GOG and/or Amazon Prime, you should check out the Heroic Games Launcher. For any other games, check out Lutris. Do note that you might have a bad or good time depending on your GPU vendor. AMD generally works out of the box while NVIDIA might not work as nice as an AMD GPU out of the box. But I think Pop has the option to install the proprietaty NVIDIA drivers during installation, so make sure to select that if you have one. Nouveau isn’t as good as the proprietary drivers.

Regarding your other software, I don’t know whether Reaper will work with Wine. If you don’t mind switching to an alternative, we have Kdenlive and GIMP or Krita.

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.)

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