You know the answer!

Exactly, that's it.

So why not do it?

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.

If you feel like trying something new, why not try it? Worst case scenario you’re just changing to a different OS anyway. Best case scenario you find something new to learn and tinker with.

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.

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.

Yes

Iirc Intel xeon is shitty, installing linux might make your overall experience with your computer better. Especially if you run something like xfce as the desktop environment.

~~CachyOS might get you some modest performance gains on that hardware~~

*edit, see reply

I have a similar usecase w/ games and ollama, good support for that on linux