Should i switch to linux? please tell me why or why not.

The biggest downside of ditching Windows is losing that comfort zone where everything just works without thinking about it. But if you're cool with putting in some effort to learn new stuff, Linux will feel way snappier right from the start.

Since you've got an Nvidia GPU, I'd definitely go with CachyOS - it's been my best Linux experience for gaming and daily use. The Linux community respects it too: https://cachyos.org/

For your setup specifically, you'll probably like how much less space Linux takes up compared to Windows, plus it's way lighter on system resources so your older hardware should perform better. Gaming works surprisingly well these days thanks to Proton, most stuff just runs.
You could dual boot first to test it first without committing. CachyOS would be perfect for what you're doing.

The answer: Yes!

The why: Why not?

Yes, from my personal experience:

It'll be a lot faster.

Edit: there's ollama-cuda on the repos and alpaca-ai on the AUR, but I changed from the self managed to use the local ollama server. For games, there's lutris, wine-cachyos, proton-cachyos, dxvk-mingw-git and vkd3d-proton-mingw-git all on the repos, so dxvk and vkd3d (the translation layers from directx to vulkan) are updated when the system is updated, but need to be installed with the provided scripts to work automagically after that.

yes

As long as you back up your data, experiment to find what you want. If you have an empty spare drive, try out the different options there. It's been a month since I moved to Bazzite. My plan was to try Mint and Bazzite while also keeping a Windows 10 ISO in my boot drive (Ventoy will allow you to have as many ISO in your USB stick). If things get too difficult, I could always go back to Windows 10. But using Bazzite has been a breeze, I decided I didn't even need Mint. Every time I think I need to open up the terminal for any issues, I find that the solution doesn't require it.

You've already got plenty of comments explaining why you should switch. You obviously should ideally. Check Protondb.com to see if your games runs on Linux.

You know the answer!

Exactly, that's it.

So why not do it?

I feel like if you're asking on this community, you've already decided you want to switch and you want help being reassured that it's viable

It's equally a pro and a con but for me it's a huge pro:

You can know exactly what your computer is doing because it will tell you!!

You can see highly verbose logs, granted it's not easy to interpret without the necessary skills but Chatgpt doesn't mind it if you dump 100 lines into a print and just say "fix my shit", I do that routinely. I hated how windows would just freeze up and flash a popup like "Program not working" and I have to guess what's going on by gauging the feeling of the software. I want exactly what I want to happen and Linux just does it without fighting me

Your biggest issue is going to be dealing with multiple partitions, unless you can find another boot disk, because your disk is pretty full. I would strongly recommend getting a second disk, unless you are willing to delete a lot of (presumably) game executables.

It is also a good idea to have a relatively smaller Linux partition, and point your Steam library and other documents to a separate data partition. My 1TB nvme has 150MB EFI FAT32 partition, a 100GB ext4 root partition (Linux is installed here), and the remaining ~900GB as my ext4 data partition. This way, if you choose to install a different Linux, or blow away your root partition, you can relink your Steam/Music/Video Libraries and local AI models, and get up and running again very quickly.

Outside of the disk, my top recommendation is to archive your active steam games, so you can restore them into Linux without fully re-downloading later. Additionally, unless your games are in Steam Cloud, you will also have a bit of a time restoring save files to the new OS, as the file paths will be different than you are used to on Windows.

My second recommendation is to ensure secure boot is disabled in your BIOS; there are currently known issues with driver signing with the NVIDIA driver.

Finally, assuming you’re on a Ubuntu-based distro like Mint, ensure you install Steam from the .deb or apt package, not the flatpak. On Mint, “Install Steam” is available right in the start menu.

Yes

Try it! You can always go back.

If you can find another HDD or SSD then you can keep your windows drive full of games intact.

I dual booted for years (for gaming) and as of now haven't used a non-linux PC for more than a decade at home or professionally.

I recommend starting with either Fedora or Ubuntu as they're among the most popular and have a large community for support.

Set yourself a goal on Linux, even if it's just "check my email" or whatever. Rinse, repeat.

If you game and use ollama and want to try Linux I think you should check out Bluefin-DX as it is specially tooled for Nvidia AI nim and nemo container environment. Nvidia drivers are ready to go.

As for your CPU choice, if you can at some point get over to at minimum 12thgen Intel (11thgen I you're willing to jump onto ali express ewaste) I think you would see a marked performance improvement overall.

Switch when Microsoft ads, bloat, telemetry and reboots starts to test your sanity. Didn't switch if everything seems fine.

i cut my teeth on linux mint with cinnamon before moving to garuda dragonized. it was my daily driver for the last four years, then i switched to proxmox and just run everything on VMs 🤷

lots of resources and documentation available for mint, but it's pretty turnkey. best advice i'd give to a newfriend is make sure you read any articles or documentation start to finish, instead of trying to follow along. also, employ good backups practice: learn what timeshift/snappy is, how it works, and how to use it.

taking a backup before making big changes has saved my ass more than once

Manjaro xfce. There is ollama if you want.