Linux

If you ever try dual booting again, just wanted to say it works much better if you have linux and windows on separate drives because windows gets to do whatever it wants on its own bootloader while linux handles everything else including switching to windows. Familiar with acer nitro laptops myself and 1050ti with i7 I assume means it's the older model with the hdd bay you can get to without disassembling. Should be simple enough to plop a 500GB SATA SSD in there for windows if you don't have one already.

P.S. be very careful with the hinges on that laptop bc it ain't fun when they break

Consider kubuntu, it's similar to windows

I always recommend people just install linux on their previous laptop if they kept it. Most will find their old laptop performs better with linux than the newer one with windows.

Another hint: Even if Lutris claims to be for games, there are often install scripts for windows applications too. So it may be worth to try to run your apps with Lutris. It should be in the mint packages (try sudo apt install lutris). Then you can add your software in Lutris with the upper left "+" button. Just use the search in the dialog box. I managed to run FL Studio like this, exactly as performant as on windows. Good luck and welcome to the linux family!

Really any distro should be fine. It's more a matter of getting the bootloader setup correctly.

Do note that, depending on the configuration, Windows will randomly overwrite stuff and mess up dual boot.

If you can for your situation, I would suggest running a Windows VM inside Linux to get certain tasks done.

Take any distro you fancy, Mint is a good start. Create a bootable USB stick an try it out. This is does not modify anything on your computer, just loads linux and let's you test it. I usually play a youtube video. This shows that wifi, video and sound work out of the box.

i've used linux in the past for servers so i did have some background but when i switched on my desktop from windows to linux, i jumped right into mint and it's been one of the best experiences. setup was pretty easier; i recommend using a live usb to test it out since you can install right from there.

Could you share laptop specs? Judging by your post any distro should work fine. Can't go wrong choosing a popular distro like Fedora or Mint.

Have you tried the softwares using winapps or winboat?
Might be a smoother solution than having to boot two different OSes.

https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
https://github.com/TibixDev/winboat

honestly any distro you want. Try a few out. Load a bunch of live ISO's on a usb drive and give them a spin. Distro hop until you find one you really like. that's the beauty of Linux they're all pretty easy to set up (hell even Arch is easy to set up now) so you can try a bunch of different ones.

You want to tinker and play around with your system? try an Arch based distro. You want something that has great support and will just work out of the box? try an Ubuntu one. Want something really unique that you can take with you where ever you go? give NixOS a shot. There are a ton of options and they're all pretty good.

I would suggest you get one that's arch based, one fedora, one ubuntu, maybe nixos, one debian, etc and see which one you like best.

Once you understand how the Linux bootloader works, restoring it is easy if windows breaks it. The other way around is more tricky if windows refuses to cooperate.

That being said, using a rescue usb like systemrescuecd will allow you to boot a Linux OS even if the bootloader isn't working properly.

I would also recommend Mint with Windows as a VM over dual booting. I find the workflow is better to not leave Linux but rather load the VM for the windows needs. This is especially with nonaggressive apps like modifying PDFs. If you were going to produce music or edit videos dual boot might be a better option.

I wouldn't recommend WinBoat for you yet. Its too new, and while I like what I've tested I want to see it in a year or two after it's fleshed out. At the end of the day you're running Windows in a VM anyways, so its pretty much the same thing.

Coming from Windows Mint is a great start

You can dual boot it, that's how I started and never looked back

How familiar are you with Linux? If you're new to it, pick something mainstream with lots of support and advice out there. I usually recommend Mint as a starter distro - it's well supported, easy to use and doesn't have the downsides of a distro like Ubuntu.

If you're familiar with Linux then I'd recommend a point release distro and not a rolling release distro. Rolling release are cutting edge but that means much more opportunity for things to go wrong which isn't a good thing to deal with if you're new to Linux.

Beyond that, most distros dual boot well with Windows (although Windows is not well-designed and can occasionally break the bootloaders as others have said).

I'm on OpenSuSE and recommend it; it's well designed with good tools in the form.of YaST. I'm personally not a fan of Fedora but I know a lot of people swear by it as a distro. Of the big distros I'd basically only really avoid Ubuntu because of how Snap is forced down people's throats. I'm also personally not a fan of immutable distros due to the reliance on Flatpak and other downsides but your milage may vary.

Regardless, dual boot with Linux and Windows is a good solution. It's how I got into Linux; my main PC still has a Win 10 partition which I don't use but keep as a backup. My laptop and a living room.Media PC are pure Linux.

I'd say Win 11 in a VM is an alternative route for those few apps but I find windows is a bit laggy even on a decent PC. It's perfectly usable - I've run Office and even windows at dual 4k without major issue, but there is a noticeable albeit small input lag and slowness in rendering the desktop that I found just annoying enough to put me off (even at 1080p single screen to be clear).

From reading it seems Win 11 does work fine if you pass through a discrete graphics card for it to use but that's only doable if you have 2 GPUS. You might have that option if your laptop has a discrete graphics card as well as an integrated one. For me it reflects how bloated and poorly optimised windows is, but there are people who report getting Win 11 to work with high end games without issue although it takes some work. Meanwhile I can get Linux VMs on a Linux host to run at near native performance with ease.

There are free alternatives to Nitro Pro but if it's an essential for you I'd try dual booting initially while.you test but don't have to solely rely on VMs initially. If VMs do the job then wiping Windows will free up a lot of space and also stop it interfering in your Laptop set up.

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