Well I guess I'm a Linux user now.
It's not lost on me that it took nearly 5 days and collectively ~30 hours to set up and get my Linux install fully operational.
But it is operational.
The last bit of this was trying to get piracy up and running again. Stellaris just released the Astral Planes update, so that was my test. I downloaded the RUNE and Fitgirl versions, both of which installed and ran correctly off the rip using Lutro.
After that I popped on an USB disc drive, popped in my old total annihilation CD and installed that and got that running.
So everything works. All the games I play worked, and all the media I played worked.
Are there some things that annoy me? Yeah. Gnome apparently doesn't let you create desktop shortcuts unless you resort to command line. That's ridiculous. I also no longer have 20+ years of experience to draw on and am having to relearn basic stuff like "how do I uninstall or undo what I just did when I ran a script from a tutorial I didn't understand".
So for now, I guess I'm along for the ride, and get to relearn how to do everything.
I wouldn't recommend Linux to my dad or any of my friends. They can barely use windows, and I had enough trouble during my setup and install that I know they'd run into an issue eventually that I'd have to solve. Plus they barely learned how to use Windows, and Linux is NOT dumbed down enough for the average user yet.
As a final note some Linux users push harder than crack dealers I've met. "Just one hit of KDE man I just know you'll love it, oh you had issues with KDE? Well try these 300 different kind of KDE's cause I promise bro once you go KDE you never go back".
Actually, you'd be surprised how well Linux works* for non-technical folks who don't have any specific computing requirements (as in, wanting to run Photoshop or use nVidia gfx etc). I've installed Linux (Xubuntu and Zorin) on several of my elderly relatives computers, including on my own parent's PCs. Some of them have used Windows all their lives, some of them don't have much experience with computers (my dad had ZERO experience), and none of them had any prior Linux experience at all.
Pretty much most of them had the same common requirement - Facebook, emails, banking, browse random sites, open and edit random documents, occasionally print stuff, occasionally scan stuff. You know, basic computing tasks. And guess what, Linux worked perfectly for them. I only had to explain them the basics - like how to save/copy files, how to print/scan etc, and that's it.
I set up a scheduled task (cronjob) to do automatic updates, and they never had any issues. Needless to say, none of them are gamers (unless you count Mahjong) and none of them had nVidia cards. They never once had to manually run a command in the terminal. And all of them were happy that their "new system" runs so much better than their "previous one" (some of them don't even know they're running Linux).
I can count on one hand the number of support calls I received in the last 5 years.
So yeah, contrary to popular belief, Linux is actually a good choice for non-technical folks - it's the technical folks, who have their own requirements, custom workflows and ingrained habits over decades of using Windows, that have issues.
* - This is of course assuming you're using a sensible, newbie friendly distro, like Xubuntu or Zorin.