So basically, for the last week my dad's old laptop have been absolutely wrecked by update. His laptop restarts while in use without warning, it forces updates and literally bluescreens because of it, all sorts of Windows update process and "compatibility telemetry" are taking 90% of the CPU and memory resources and when I kill them then force restart, the laptop lags like hell for a moment.
So what I'm saying, is Microsoft secretly fucking up with old PCs and laptops that are still good enough to run 10 but can't upgrade to 11? Like what Apple did with their old phones? I've been trying to look for information about this yet none of the tech sites turns up anything.
There are easy to install Linux distributions where the primary hurdle is putting the installation stuff on a USB drive and making your computer boot from it.
But it's still got a learning curve just like switching to a Mac has one. And with Linux there's more variety in a lot of places where MS or Apple only offer one thing, so your experience depends on which desktop environment you use, for example (GNOME, KDE, others).
You can dual boot, where you have both Linux and Windows installed on one computer and restart to switch between them. You might want to try that out so that learning Linux stuff is low-pressure but you'll be able to make a full switch more easily down the road.