Run LTSC /w MAS to activate it while that's still an option as that and the rest of the Enterprise/IoT SKUs of both Win10 and Win11 still let you make local accounts, or move to Linux if you can and you're not locked into Windows by anything.

Had Win 11 on my laptop (came with it) swapped to Mint 2 days ago. First Linux device. I cannot express how much faster it loads shit now.

Linux Mint and Firefox should be good starting points.

Pop!_OS, PikaOS, CachyOS, and Bazzite are the top gaming distros right now.

I recommend Pop! if you have Nvidia cards. If you have AMD, any of them will work.

PikaOS or Bazzite with the KDE Plasma desktop are going to be closest to Windows 10 in terms of how you use them.

Pop! has a super different UI, almost Mac-like. But it's based on Ubuntu, the most-used distro. Which means that if anything goes wrong you can search "[problem] Ubuntu" and get hundreds of solution pages.

CachyOS is based on Arch, which is the big, scawy Linux that all the nerds say they use. It's easier to break than the other ones, and won't officially offer some of the apps that something Debian/Ubuntu based might have. I would recommend it when you're looking to get a bit more technical.

That said, I haven't broken my install yet and CachyOS is like the fastest OS available right now. Serious FPS gains for a LOT of games compared to Windows, and even other Linux distros. I also have not had to sit and troubleshoot it over anything. I was shocked at how smooth it was for an Arch system.

So, there's not really a bad choice in those 4. I'd recommend Pop! if you never want to have to tinker, Pika or Bazzite if you want to feel like you're still using Windows, and Cachy when you feel comfortable taking some training wheels off (and that could be right now!).

For browsers, try LibreWolf. It's a locked-down version of Firefox. Or just use Firefox. It ain't perfect, but then again it ain't Chrome.

Bazzite and Librewolf

The meat of the work Valve did was with the compatibility layer, not SteamOS itself. This means you can choose any distro you're comfortable with and games will work as well as they do in SteamOS. I recommend Bazzite.

I ran steamos for a few months on my gaming PC.... You can download the iso and run it on just about any hardware (so long as it's team red).

Cachyos is better

The immutable nature of steamos made sure i wouldn't ever be able to fuck it up, but it also means you cant really sudo anything, plus it's missing basic PC functionality like printer drivers etc.

For anyone else on the fence, you don't need to wait. Lots of distros support gaming right out the box. I switched my gaming desktop (nvidia card) to Pop_OS!, installed Steam, and it just works.

What factors lead you to select Cachy?

Well, Adobe is not "household" software. :-)

But there are a lot of other software, that people have a hard time letting go of. Like Affinity, Scrivener, certain games, a lot of small programs/apps, like FastStone apps (Image viewer and more), AllMyNotes, ActionOutline, Duplicate cleaner 5, EZ CD Audio Converter and more...

AutoCAD

i used to think this too; but seeing tech literacy rate drop since the widespread adoption of smartphones makes me wonder if people will go with whatever works well enough and for the least about of effort.

and linux still takes effort.

No. More people will just keep using Windows 10.

You don't need to "crack" anything. Massgrave can activate any version of windows through the official process.

It technically probably breaks the EULA but no one gives a shit (including MS).

I switched 5 weeks ago and it's honestly in a much better state than I thought. I haven't felt the need to use Windows in those 5 weeks. It feels like I'm back in 90s with full control of my computer again.

If you stay with AMD graphics and avoid highly competitive games that require kernel level anti cheat Linux for gaming works just fine. Especially with steam. But also epic games etc run pretty well.