If you're looking for something to buy, look elsewhere.. Linux is FREE

In addition to all the sound advice you've been give so far, you should have a support contract in case you run into problems and ideally, contract someone to set up your laptop so you have proper encryption, backup etc. You have to consider both meeting the business deadlines, and ensuring the confidentiality and availability of the data. If you want to do this yourself, contract someone to validate your configuration.

You can do everything but you will have problems with word documents. There's online office for better compatability with the caveat of reduced functionality. There's great compatability with Only Office and WPS Office but its not perfect.

There was a comment recommending Zorin OS and I agree. Its a great distro to switch to from windows. Setup is easy and flathub is included in the software store.

I'd recommend trying Linux on dualboot and see if you can replace windows!

It's a rabbit hole, you have to get fairly deep into it to start reaping some "benefits". Even if you start with something easy like cinnamon mint, there's a small chance it might break something on major upgrade. But it's generally fairly easy to fix if you have some grasp on the system.

The best way to learn would be to just install something like arch or debian in a VM but do everything in manual steps while trying to understand what every step's accomplishing.

As a lawyer you should always use Linux.

Have a LUKS encrypted hard drive.

Video formats? There literally are VLC, ffmpeg and MPV. Every normal format works on every Distro.

Get most apps from Flathub.org, use any Distro you want but I recommend Fedora Kinoite.

Word documents for sure, PDF editing actually too. PDF editing is cursed in itself, but Okular + PDF arranger + Firefox + sometimes GIMP (for actually censoring) work.

Have a look at Stirling PDF, a project combining all of these effords. Its not yet a fully graphical desktop app but this command will work on Fedora Kinoite:

podman run -d \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v /location/of/trainingData:/usr/share/tesseract-ocr/4.00/tessdata \
  frooodle/s-pdf:latest

Then you can use StirlingPDF in your browser by opening localhost:8080

Use any modern Linux Distro and stay away from outdated Desktops like Mint (Cinnamon), XFCE, Budgie, Mate etc.

@Sage_the_Lawyer @linux I don't think selling is how it works. You have to be frustrated enough to seek out alternatives to the mainstream, then you find Linux and try it for yourself and it works okay.

Things made by billion dollar companies with a profit motive are almost always going to be better than things made by random people in their spare time - except in areas like privacy.

You're allowed to try it out before committing to it though.

You need to try it. Don't just roll it out in your business. Try it yourself before. Get an old/secondary computer and install it, try your templates and workflows. See which version (distribution) you like. Get your E-Mail connected and so on.

I can tell you Linux isn't Windows or MacOS. For me, it works very well. I can do lots of things Windows users can not do or that are very cumbersome there, and I don't have any advertisements or privacy issues. It respects my rights and freedoms as a user. And I've had way less issues with my printers and stuff than my windows-friends. I've never had a virus on my machine. I can't tell you if it works for you.

I also don't like selling it. It's (arguably) better, faster and more user-friendly than Windows in many ways. But you need to find out if you can make use of it. One big factor against it would be familiarization with a different product. Except for that, I invite you to try it.

No one will try to sell you anything, not even ads

Get a MacBook and use apple software if you are a lawyer.

You can't be sold on Linux. Anyone 'sold on' or 'lead to' Linux isn't going to stick with it. The desire to learn to use and be productive with Linux is purely an internal one. Selling you on it would be like trying to push you into a religion. For this, you need to sell yourself on Linux. Install it, run it, make it your daily system for a few weeks or months... then you can decide if it is for you. The questions you'll need to find answers to are, but not limited to:

• Will it run the software I need? You mention PDF's... Viewing non-encrypted PDF's is no problem. For encrypted PDF forms that I've seen from some government sites, I needed Windows or Mac to fill them out reliably. I was able to do some within Wine, but that wasn't stable enough to depend on.
• Be aware there are desktop choices. Linux comes in many flavours, some can present and work similar to a Windows desktop workflow, some more similar to Mac (but not quite), and some are just either heritage UNIX styles or just Linux unique. Finding what you prefer can take some trial and effort.
• I suggest Linux distributions that offer disk encryption (and be sure to use it). If you were my lawyer, I wouldn't want the documents we share to be left around un-encrypted anywhere.

Check out some Linux periodicals, as well. They can help wet your whistle with reviews on various Linux distributions and often some introductory articles on software and How-To's. If that kind of thing interests you, you've already half sold yourself on Linux.

Linux is usually light compared to windows, and no nonsense bloatware and faster to run. Plus is customizable.

If you are a lawyer I assume you are looking for stability and prefer simple over complex. So my guess is that Debian(since is the most stable rock solid distro) would suit you, and most importantly is the desktop environment, if you are looking something similar to Windows I would choose KDE Plasma and if you like MacOS interface then Gnome. Both of them are very different but customizable, I find Gnome is simpler and less busy and Plasma is full of features but busy IMO. Oh and Cinnamon desktop environment is best of both worlds I think. If you are concerned about security and encryption then I'm afraid I can't advice you on that. Finally I recommend looking up in "distrowatch" if you are looking for something most specific, most distros come with Libre Office as some of the comments point out. There are some distros specifically made for business wich I would recommend if you go big.

Here is a post I made of my desktop with Gnome so that you can see how it look and feels.

https://feddit.cl/pictrs/image/39b62b9a-ebfa-4d4e-a944-4a58cc765357.png

I’m also nervous about using an OS I’m not familiar with for business purposes right away.

Install the latest version of VMware Player (17.5) on your current OS, then install linux distros on virtual machines to figure things out first.

If you settle on any you like, make a full disk image backup, before repartitioning to install linux as a dual boot setup and try it on hardware that way.

Keep the Windows partition around, if nothing else just for games or apps that don’t work on linux, or as your backup working profession setup.

edit: some will recommend VirtualBox instead, but for me (on Windows at least) it always resizes on startup incorrectly and obscures part of the desktop, so I have to manually resize on every VM boot. VMware does it properly each time for me without issues.

Regarding the tools, you must take into consideration the fact that you do not have Microsoft apps on Linux (unless you run them through wine or online, which is not ideal). However there are several alternative tools, either open source (libre office-imperfect compatibility, Onlyoffice desktop-better compatibility, incomplete feature set) or closed source (either WPS office or FreeOffice). PDF is an annoying one as unless you feel comfortable with libreoffice draw or you want to do more basic editing, tools for PDF on Linux are kind of lacking

Here's a good discussion on HN about this, including comments from lawyers.

Others have given you some good advice but I'll still give you my opinion because more data points is good.

First of all, as others said, it's better perhaps if you switch your home computer first or try it out on a VM or dual-boot first as you learn how to use it rather than erasing Windows altogether at first. Regardless of your choice I'd recommend giving it a try still.

Affordability is not a concern at all, most Linux Distros are free and they'll work perfectly fine, usually when you pay for distros you're either paying for better tech support or to support the distro itself, and a lot of the software that's on the repos is also free.

Your biggest concern probably would be re-learning the OS. Now, obviously Linux and windows work very differently, for example installing software on Linux is mainly done via an app-store or the terminal. As for graphics, shortcuts, etc, there's two approaches here, which one is better depends on your preferences. You can either stick to something similiar to windows, so any distro that has Cinnamon, KDE plasma, or Xfce (you will have to move a few stuff and configure it a bit at the beginning) will do well, I'd recommend Linux Mint; or you can do something more different that will force you to learn something new and will tell you visually "Look, I'm not windows, I'm built different!" so something like GNOME (or customize the other DEs to something you like), personally I'm not a fan of GNOME but it works well for your use-case, as any DE will do, in this case I recommend Pop!_OS.

Both of my recommendetions use apt and are debian (through Ubuntu as the middledistro) derivatives btw. This is important because when you encounter a problem or a certain software not being in the repo it is good to look for sources closely related to your distro.

Linux can do everything you mentioned and more, however compatibility with M$ Word documents/etc can be a bit iffy. Personally I always used LibreOffice and aside from some minor annoyances never had issues with it and using .docx but I also don't work at a professional environment that requires it to work perfectly. However you're in luck as you can still use M$ office & other stuff from your browser if needed, tho I assume it will have less resources and will require an internet connection (this can be mitigated by working offline with LibreOffice, OpenOffice or any Office suite you like then copy-pasting it to M$ word or whatever), tho I wouldn't know since I don't use either and never planning on doing so. There's also google docs.

Video types should work just fine especially common ones, VLC is a powerful tool. If you're installing Mint make sure to install the media codecs at install.

Also I recommend learning the terminal, it may seem scary at first but it is easy, fast and will help you troubleshoot. Also accept that you will encounter problem, like in every system, and you're expected to solve them yourself, this means you can spend a lot of time looking up stuff, learning to look at logs, etc. This will of course take time but it would take as much if not more time on windows too sometimes, on the bright side Linux tends to be a little better at telling you the problem if you know what to look for and also you almost never have to deal with an issue until the company fixes it, you can literally go and fix the code yourself if needs be. Anyways, on this end I recommend using a stable distribution (like the ones I mentioned), stick to the official repos as much as possible, and at install make a separate partition for your home folder, that way worst case scenario you can always just reinstall the OS (takes 15 mins) without losing your files*. Also, this goes for everything and I can't stress it enough: MAKE FREQUENT BACKUPS, and better yet do them in multiple places: Proton Drive, external hard disk/USB, an other drive on your PC, whatever just have at least one, preferably 2+, place that isn't your computer or its main drive be your backup space. This goes for Windows too and even though I assume you know it I will still say it because it's extremely important and always overlooked.

*Unless you erase the partition by mistake or something.

P.S. also given the nature of your job, you might want to encrypt the hard disk (write the password somewhere and make sure to use a password specifically for it and one you can remember, password managers/generators don't help here) and learn to use the gpg command when you need to encrypt and sign documents.

Its fun to open the terminal and learning the language of the computer, even if it disagree with you sometimes. Most times. Also i can do anything, including messing it up irreparably!

You sound more of a Windows 11 type. Linux is free (free as freedom, not free beer), we dont have to sell you anything.

You're already fed up by Windows, so why use it?

You'll probably be forced to use some Windows programs specific to your profession. You might not have a huge choice.

Linux is stable if you use a distro that's known to be stable, example: Linux mint. This is one of the "just works" distros. There are a couple, but I highly recommend mint. Linux can do all of what you need done, from documents, PDFs to viewing all kinds of videos. I've never once run into any issue doing any of that. You have libreoffice and onlyoffice that have amazing compatibility with MS office. If anything, you can use the MS office suite online and call it a day. Hell, you can use Google's office suite, too. PDFs? Zero worries. Videos are good, too. We do have VLC which basically plays anything you throw at it. However, since you have a business and want to make sure things always work, I do recommend that you keep at least one windows machine in the office for just in case. I don't have a business, but I've always had this one laptop that runs windows. I debloated the shit out of it. Blocked all of the telemetry using Microsoft's own firewall and it's sitting there for just in case.

Edit: forgot to mention that you are always welcome to come here and ask if you needed help. I find the Lemmy Linux community to be extremely helpful. Everyone jumps in to help every time I had a question.

zorin os is an out of the box distro that will have all the applications from the start and maximum windows look, feel, and compatibility. https://zorin.com/os/

It's about being in the free software ecosystem, which is really a licensing issue.

Forcing people to contribute their modifications to software when they are editing free software ensures we're never dependent on the decisions of one entity. This is what the GNU General Public License (GPL) is all about.

If we don't like what someone did, we can take that part out and redistribute a better version that we can continue to modify. This might not matter to someone who doesn't program, but it should.

You don't have to be the one to get your hands dirty with code. Just being a user in the ecosystem opens you up to these benefits. Other people are going to take advantage of them, and you can just piggyback on their work.

I, personally, think it's always just a matter of time before businesses make products worse by charging more/giving less. Look at Adobe. Look at Microsoft. Look at Apple. All of them want to lock people into endless subscriptions because they're dependent on their ecosystem. What happens when Adobe decides they're not charging enough for photoshop? They charge more, and everyone just has to deal with it. Same goes for Office. Same goes for Apple, they just do it the old-fashioned way by charging for the latest versions and making you buy new hardware.

Youre a lawyer just get a mac lmao

Nope. Try it and be your own objective judge.

For opening Word documents, I'd highly recommend OnlyOffice. Has outstanding compatibility with documents originally created in Microsoft Word, and it's free on Flathub

Another alternative if you have an existing 365 subscription would be the online version of Word in your web browser.

If you're heavily into the 365 ecosystem though, do note that things like Onedrive compatibility aren't all the way there on linux, so you'd miss luxuries like right-clicking a file and getting a shareable link, or sending a file to someone directly from the file manager. For these you'll need to drag-n-drop the file into onedrive, or into your email app to send them.

Things like opening PDFs, viewing various video formats etc, are built-in and work flawlessly on pretty much all Linux distros. Support for opening encrypted PDF files should be flawless too, haven't had issues with these myself.

Would recommend Linux Mint, or Zorin OS, as both have a pretty similar look and feel when coming from Windows