As a former lifelong Windows user (from 2002 to 2019), I honestly don't get why people continue using Windows in the future. It doesn't make sense to me. They're cracking down on liberties, increasing system requirements, and old software and games are gradually becoming less compatible. And people seem to be starting to realize that other options are becoming gradually more attractive, because Windows is now hovering below 70% while just ten years ago it was at over 90%. Meanwhile Mac has grown from 7% to 20%, and Linux is at an unprecedented 3%, and that's not counting ChromeOS, which is slightly higher.

The mistakes Microsoft is doing can prove fatal. Because I think for most people, once they embrace Linux, even if Windows improves, they won't wanna go back.

I highly recommend Linux Mint (cinnamon) as an entry level Linux distro. It looks and feels similar to Windows, and it's based on Ubuntu, so it has a lot of support and compatibility.

A SO that moves you to Linux? Sign me up! ❤️

Kubuntu for that win7 similarity. (It's still official ubuntu)

did the same transition when switched to Lemmy. Very wise decision to take.

Noo please don't Ubuntu. Just plain debian or mint debian instead for the closest thing without canonical. Ubuntu is based on debian and all the actual reasons to use it over debian ended probably like a decade or so ago.

I don't think there are many distro specific proton issues, if they exist at all. I've switched from arch to tumbleweed to bazzite(ublue/fedora based) and the only issues were unrelated to gaming. Proton would work on a toaster if it had a display and a vulkan compatible GPU.

The meme that will never ever go away.

The only reason my windows partition still lives is so I can stream VR to the quest 2, literally everything else I do in Linux and I'm so close to 100% I can taste it!

You should try plain Debian and KDE Plasma (the desktop it's one of the options of the shelf, you just pick it with the installer). I have been doing that and it's great, even with old hardware. Ubuntu is way too much bloated. And of course proton works like magic.

If your friend ends up not liking the GNOME desktop environment because it's so radically different from the Windows UI, then maybe add the K in Ubuntu, I guess.

If I'm not mistaken it's not that Steam will just completely cease to function on that date, Just they won't be fixing any bugs related to Windows7/8 from that point on.