For those who want a summary; it's been going okay, but could've gone better. I decided to space out my tinkering and keep going with life, since these days my life is not so bound to my desktop. (It's also possible some details weren't recorded quite right. Many search tabs were closed)
I've been aware of the impending death of W10 in October 2025, with fears that hackers will start taking over the OS at that time. My main reason for avoiding Linux was game support, but Valve has been handling that well.
I decided to set up a Linux Mint 21 drive, which at first was difficult because my first USB stick had corrupted sectors (took some time to determine that was the issue). Then, when I booted in...it didn't support my wi-fi (it claimed it did, then couldn't connect, even when pairing with my phone). My first plan was to set up a nice, isolated 500GB partition on my nvme SSD (a drive I'd mostly used to store games) for Linux, and have it refer to the NTFS partition for games. (I would later learn this doesn't work well, and Linux is optimized for ext4).
Then, I learned this NVME had an "MBR" partition table, and I still had to convert it to GPT. While there's several tools for this, they complained due to the placement of my partitions, not leaving enough space for the table. I tried moving the entire gaming partition 1MB to the right...and got the same error.
After deleting the (backed up) partition to finish GPT conversion, I learned two things. One, that it was actually complaining because when giving the converter the target Device, I had given it the "Device:" labeled in the Disk management, which was "/dev/nvmen0p1". Guess what the P stands for at the end? So, gentle tip: The "Device" is not the "device", it's the partition - and diskpart does not present the resulting error well. Second thing I learned was that Windows had somehow put some of its boot setup on the NVME back when I had installed it on my computer; so now Windows wouldn't boot. (I'll see if I can fix this later. Windows' fault, not Linux's)
The good news is, I had downloaded a copy of Mint 22 (1 up), and THIS got full wi-fi and audio support. A little strange I had to go so recent for basic old-hardware support, but it could've been something else odd going on. I installed Steam, got a cryptic error about 32-bit NVidia drivers I ignored, and with my library moved back (and fixing ownership through chown, something Steam thankfully provided a relatively clear error message on) it's been able to run a few test games!
Having my browser and some basics up, I can kick back on YouTube and tackle whichever pressing things I think of first. I don't have replacements for 2 or 3 Windows products I like, but overall the setup has gone well, and a few of my annoyances actually go to my USB drive store, and Windows. Overall, much better than a decade past when I last tried Linux.
To keep Windows as an option, I'm planning to run a Windows installer repair boot to my original drive; but am admittedly worried whatever caused it to install boot info to the NVME against my instructions last time will, once again, screw up Linux. I may also try seeing if GRUB can locate Windows and boot it successfully. I feel somewhat blind on the topic of setting up / fixing the OS bootup.
I can tell this process is much simpler if someone has only one drive, backs things up to an external device, and then installs cleanly. Only on that vein, I wouldn't mind recommending it to others. Still, that's only in part because Microsoft has steadily made things worse and worse on the Windows front. (And, of course, I'll still be using it for work)
I think your trouble just stems from inexperience, and not knowing exactly what you needed or where you were heading aside from being off Windows.
You also seem intent on Mint (Ubuntu), which sort of locks you into a specific path.
I wasn’t dedicated to Mint, but every thread on distro has had its arguments (eg “Whoa, no, I would NOT recommend xxx to a newbie” “yyy isn’t mature”), so it’s difficult to decide who to trust given the goal of Linux.
I had a bit of experience using Steam OS daily when a Deck was my only computer. I’ve heard of Bazzite, but wasn’t quite sure it was mature enough.
Fedora - faster point releases and closer to modern kernels Debian - slow release, but stable Ubuntu - two releases per year, but sticks to older more stable kernel versions Arch - roll your own. Mostly for the very experienced.
Understanding WHY one distro may not work well on your hardware is key though. The above definitions should help with that, but understand that any derivative of one Ubuntu point release will behave exactly as all others out of the box. Meaning anything based on 24.03 will work with the same hardware out of the box because of the kernel version. Switching to a different distro base may yield different results.
Anyone making too much of a big deal about any of these is either over-opinionated and wrong, or absolutely full of shit and doesn't know what they are talking about. You need what works best for you, and your hardware. If it runs well from a livecd, just go with it.