Backup all your personal data on windows prior to attempting anything. On a separate disk and cloud if possible. For cloud backups, just pick the important stuff. No need to backup steam libraries since steam servers are the backup in this case.

Like others have said, if you can use a separate disk, do that. If you can’t do that and you just want to try out Linux, use a USB live disk to test hardware compatibility and the user experience, or if you have an old laptop or desktop that isn’t being used, load Linux on that first.

Pick a popular distro for better community support. If you have a recently released laptop (less than a year old) might want to pick a distro with newer kernel for better hardware support. My personal recommendations are Pop!_OS, Fedora (both gnome and KDE versions). Both work well on newer hardware. Others you might want to try are Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

After getting Linux installed, try and keep your home partition backed up, especially if Windows is on the same disk.

Try and use Flatpak for all your apps, flathub is the web “store” for Flatpak apps.

Be open to trying the Linux alternative to apps since the windows version might not be available.

This is a new OS so expecting things to work a certain way isn’t realistic.

Most of the time a GUI is available for what you need to do, but learning the terminal is super helpful and a lot of people prefer it once they make the switch.

When searching online, try to include your distro and its version. It will help narrow down results.

If you’re gaming, check ProtonDB for game compatibility, and be willing to tinker a bit.

If you do have Nvidia graphics, Pop!_OS and other distros that bake the drivers into the disk image or install process are better for beginners.

Opinion portion: Firefox is a better holistic choice over chromium based browsers (see Google’s web environment integrity aka DRM for the web). KDE is a great desktop for people who like the Windows workflow, but I prefer Gnome. Nvidia graphics are much less problematic these days, but I still prefer amd and Intel hardware.

Life is hard; everyone is doing their best; be hard on problems and soft on people.

Good luck ;)

Second, gotta love the new rust based tools and apps getting developed. Although I’ve seen some weird formatting issues on windows. Linux version is solid though.

I’ve been using Firefox Relay for about a year and its been great. I might switch over to Simplelogin since I already pay for a premium sub with proton and its now included.

One small thing that simplelogin might do better than others is sending from an alias. Replying is fine from Firefox Relay but if I wanted to start a new email using an alias, I think simplelogin is capable but Relay isnt able to.

I agree but you miss out on smaller instances that are trying to create new communities. I think subbing to hashtags might be better (similar to Mastodon)

I actually think Lemmy should take a page from Mastodon here. Instead of users creating groups (which sounds like a huge headache to implement smoothly), Lemmy should add hashtags or something similar. So I would sub to #photography and people posting would be restricted to a max number of hashtags (TBD). You can then choose to stay subbed to the hashtag and/or sub to the communities that crop up frequently on your feed and then unsub from the hashtag if you want.