Hmm. Windows shouldn’t be putting anything on the Linux drive. Maybe disconnect the other drive before installing Windows.

You could use a separate drive for Linux.

I really enjoy Tumbleweed. I’ve been using it for about 18 months now without issue. One thing to note though is that TW only packages production release Nvidia drivers. This means you will not have the 555 or 560 drivers that make Wayland usable by default. You can always install the latest drivers with the run file provided by Nvidia. Some people also use the CUDA repo to get the newer drivers. However, I’d think both of these options may be the type of tinkering you are trying to avoid.

Overall I think TW is a great distro but it may be a bit more setup for Nvidia gaming on Wayland than you are looking for. If you’re down with doing a little tinkering or gaming on X give it a shot. You can always roll back if something gets messed up.

openSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty comfy. Btrfs snapshots enabled by default so it’s really hard to break it. I’ve been using it for about 8 months now and haven’t had any big issues.