Speaking as someone who recently made the jump, Linux Mint is good. Not perfect but an easy enough on-ramp, aside from a couple of hiccups. You can run lots of (most?) Windows programs in Wine which is not an emulator.
If you have the opportunity I'd recommend dual-booting with windows to ease out the transition. Make Linux your default, have windows as a backup which you can resort to in moments of absolute frustration (and also to get a taste of how bad it really is on the Microsoft side of the fence), and gradually over time you'll find yourself probably relying more and more on Linux.
Dual boot works better on two separate drives for unnecessarily complicated reasons (thanks, Microsoft), so if that's at all an option then do that.
Linux gaming has come a long way in a short time, especially thanks to the Steam Deck and now Bazzite really driving Linux gaming to get up to speed. I'm not really much of a gamer so I can't tell you what it's like on Linux and I haven't had the capacity to sort out emulation as of yet but at a guess I think you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised for the most part.
Pro-tip: if you are trying out a Linux distro, consider buying a reasonably sized SD card, presuming that you've got a SD slot in your laptop. Just get a microsd card and use an adapter for the broader applicability, if possible. Load up your distro on the card and run it off of that for a little bit to get a feel for Linux in your own time. Then, as long as your SD slot is low profile that it doesn't protrude, once you switch to a more permanent dual-boot set up you can use the SD card as a makeshift shared drive (because Microsoft makes a shared Window/Linux drive kinda painful, naturally).
There are other good distros out there but Mint has been my daily for months now and I'm quite happy with it. It's not perfect but I have a strong preference for it over Windows, which is the destination I wanted to arrive at.
Sounds like you don't have much to lose. In your case, unless there is some specific programs you need to use on your laptop for work/study then you should be fine diving headlong into a Linux install tbh. Windows can be a pain to have running on a dual-boot on the same drive though. You will need to disable secure boot and the way that the different OSes manage the internal time on the device differs so you need to direct one of the two to follow the other OS' default format, I believe. Aside from that you should be alright - I've heard that some people encounter other difficulties but these either emerge when you have a shared partition on your drive and you have that open in on OS, then you suspend that OS rather than shutting down before starting the other OS as I think this will cause the partition to be locked out from the other OS until you shut the first one down. I figure nothing big will likely come of that but I've never encountered it personally so just something to be aware of.
As for the other issues that may occur from a dual-boot set up on the same drive, I'm not sure whether that's an older issue that doesn't occur anymore because the cause of it has been resolved or if it's specific to certain OSes or what. I've never encountered it personally, although after the initial week the number of times that I've booted back into windows has been less than half a dozen times.
Pro-tip: if you are pretty set on making Linux your daily driver then I'd go through the pain of allocating the majority of your drive space to Linux because you will probably want almost all of it there. If you divide it up 50/50 you're probably going to wish you had a larger partition for Linux once Windows becomes your backup "if I really have to" OS, especially if you plan to have an extensive library of games on Linux.
Does WINE work with things like Solidworks, AutoCAD etc. that I use professionally (but also for hobby 3d printing)? That and the occasional game that doesn't work on both (I mostly play indie games) are my main hesitancies
I haven't seen anyone actually succeed at getting proprietary enterprise graphics software to work (besides Davinci Resolve and that's a very, very painful experience and probably a form of torture). You'd most likely need to dual boot or use a virtual machine setup. The software will likely never be ported until Linux is like 10% market share because capitalism is efficient or they somehow receive web ports like Microsoft office web and such.
For gaming you can use Steam, Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher (GOG,Epic), or Bottles to set everything up. I've had more games work ootb then not and even got a fully modded Fallout New Vegas with MO2 to work so never say never (until you can't debug the WINE stack trace). The only games that will probably never work are those that require anticheat rootkits.
I've never used Solidworks or AutoCAD so I can't speak to whether they work in WINE or if it would be suitable for 3D printing - honestly I'd be concerned about stability in WINE for 3D printing because of the risk of prints failing but this is so far outside of my wheelhouse that I really have no idea.
But it sounds like dual-booting would probably be the best solution for you, especially with the odd game that isn't compatible.
Speaking as someone who recently made the jump, Linux Mint is good. Not perfect but an easy enough on-ramp, aside from a couple of hiccups. You can run lots of (most?) Windows programs in Wine which is
notan emulator.If you have the opportunity I'd recommend dual-booting with windows to ease out the transition. Make Linux your default, have windows as a backup which you can resort to in moments of absolute frustration (and also to get a taste of how bad it really is on the Microsoft side of the fence), and gradually over time you'll find yourself probably relying more and more on Linux.
Dual boot works better on two separate drives for unnecessarily complicated reasons (thanks, Microsoft), so if that's at all an option then do that.
Linux gaming has come a long way in a short time, especially thanks to the Steam Deck and now Bazzite really driving Linux gaming to get up to speed. I'm not really much of a gamer so I can't tell you what it's like on Linux and I haven't had the capacity to sort out emulation as of yet but at a guess I think you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised for the most part.
Pro-tip: if you are trying out a Linux distro, consider buying a reasonably sized SD card, presuming that you've got a SD slot in your laptop. Just get a microsd card and use an adapter for the broader applicability, if possible. Load up your distro on the card and run it off of that for a little bit to get a feel for Linux in your own time. Then, as long as your SD slot is low profile that it doesn't protrude, once you switch to a more permanent dual-boot set up you can use the SD card as a makeshift shared drive (because Microsoft makes a shared Window/Linux drive kinda painful, naturally).
There are other good distros out there but Mint has been my daily for months now and I'm quite happy with it. It's not perfect but I have a strong preference for it over Windows, which is the destination I wanted to arrive at.
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Sounds like you don't have much to lose. In your case, unless there is some specific programs you need to use on your laptop for work/study then you should be fine diving headlong into a Linux install tbh. Windows can be a pain to have running on a dual-boot on the same drive though. You will need to disable secure boot and the way that the different OSes manage the internal time on the device differs so you need to direct one of the two to follow the other OS' default format, I believe. Aside from that you should be alright - I've heard that some people encounter other difficulties but these either emerge when you have a shared partition on your drive and you have that open in on OS, then you suspend that OS rather than shutting down before starting the other OS as I think this will cause the partition to be locked out from the other OS until you shut the first one down. I figure nothing big will likely come of that but I've never encountered it personally so just something to be aware of.
As for the other issues that may occur from a dual-boot set up on the same drive, I'm not sure whether that's an older issue that doesn't occur anymore because the cause of it has been resolved or if it's specific to certain OSes or what. I've never encountered it personally, although after the initial week the number of times that I've booted back into windows has been less than half a dozen times.
Pro-tip: if you are pretty set on making Linux your daily driver then I'd go through the pain of allocating the majority of your drive space to Linux because you will probably want almost all of it there. If you divide it up 50/50 you're probably going to wish you had a larger partition for Linux once Windows becomes your backup "if I really have to" OS, especially if you plan to have an extensive library of games on Linux.
Does WINE work with things like Solidworks, AutoCAD etc. that I use professionally (but also for hobby 3d printing)? That and the occasional game that doesn't work on both (I mostly play indie games) are my main hesitancies
I haven't seen anyone actually succeed at getting proprietary enterprise graphics software to work (besides Davinci Resolve and that's a very, very painful experience and probably a form of torture). You'd most likely need to dual boot or use a virtual machine setup. The software will likely never be ported until Linux is like 10% market share because capitalism is efficient or they somehow receive web ports like Microsoft office web and such.
For gaming you can use Steam, Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher (GOG,Epic), or Bottles to set everything up. I've had more games work ootb then not and even got a fully modded Fallout New Vegas with MO2 to work so never say never (until you can't debug the WINE stack trace). The only games that will probably never work are those that require anticheat rootkits.
I've never used Solidworks or AutoCAD so I can't speak to whether they work in WINE or if it would be suitable for 3D printing - honestly I'd be concerned about stability in WINE for 3D printing because of the risk of prints failing but this is so far outside of my wheelhouse that I really have no idea.
But it sounds like dual-booting would probably be the best solution for you, especially with the odd game that isn't compatible.
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