Linux

What can I say, give it a try, and then judge by yourself.

Personally I use it for daily stuff, running steam on it too for some games that aren't heavy on graphics.
I find it faster, smoother, less resource hog than any windows I used so far (still stuck at win 7 for games+office+photoshop tho), and compiz beats up Aero by far :D

Edit: for starters Linux Mint is probably the most user friendly
Edit2: Before going for dual boot, you can try using it a bit in a virtual machine (like Virtualbox), to see if it suits you.

I've tried... so many times with Linux. It's fine, not the revolution some of its more passionate acolytes would have the world believe but a clean and functional experience nowadays. But it's also flat out a pain in the arse not being able to flick onto whatever app you fancy, not having the driver support for a random bit of hardware, having to reboot to play a lot of games instead of having a quick five minutes to clear your mind.

In the end that's why it remains the domain of enthusiasts, at least as a home.machine. It's the dual boot option on my machines that only gets booted when I'm bored.

Shame really, I'd like to ditch Windows. Just not enough I guess.

UI/UX wise, all distributions pretty much lack, a lot. And they tend to get broken one way or another.
So, as I always say, only do it if you care about the whole OSS/FSF thing, or if you just don't want to run macOS/Windows.
I also recommend it to those curious people who want to understand how things work, and they are not afraid of the command prompt.

Everything wizzadoo said is good advice! Try Mint (with Cinnamon) on VirtualBox, and get an idea.

to understand Linux and taste it you should not make dual boot or virtualbox, just full remove w%@%$&s, and forget all your expirience with OS. install linux and try to use it for a month. all difficulties are easily passed with google, many people say, thay need ms office/ photoshop/ 3d max/ etc. that not true, most of them install that programs and never use. most people really need only web browser, file browser and videoplayer (and steam) I use linux only for 3 years, and I am happy. you can visit my steam page and see how many good games have linux support. for the last year i do not even use WINE, win only games are dead for me. good luck and have fun with Linux \o/

As others have mentioned, pick a distribution that appeals to you and give it a spin - it's the best way to judge.

I've been using linux for five years now, but I have a dual boot setup at home as ironically, I occassionally need both systems for work. There's a lot of linux flavours out there, so try a few and see which works for you. I really enjoyed Ubuntu before Unity happened to it (now I'm on a Mate version of it). Not everything will run smoothly, but it's quite liberating in a way as you don't have to bloat up the machine with lots of one-use applications - there's probably a command line for it somewhere. I spend a lot of my linux time in the terminal (and actually prefer it to GUIs), so as Geosmin said, if you enjoy a little tinkering now and then and like know how and why something works and something doesn't try linux. Even if you just want things to work out of the box and look shiny, while you might end up dropping it, give it a spin, as you're not losing anything by it.

Also, I'm not in IT, programming and stuff and there's really no skill requirement to use a linux system. If you have a problem, 98% of the time Google (via a friendly forum somewhere) has your solution. It's okay to reasonably experiment, too. The system will not let you set your machine on fire by default, but if you go sudo or root on it, it expects you know what you're doing and will let you. Fireworks optional.

Last time I had that plan, many years ago, I ended up buying a PS2. :] I do think Linux is better but rebooting every time you feel like playing a game was too much and staying in Windows after playing defated the purpose.

Now I reluctantly run Win7 on the PC I play on and Linux everywhere else.

My 2 cents: it's not as complicated as some people make it out to be. I have seen people write "if you have to go to command line, it's not ready for prime time" and other such arguments. Those same arguments can be applied to Windows ... it's just what you are used to.

I've been using ubuntu almost exclusively since 2006. I've only been on Steam for about a year. I only play games that are available on linux, there are plenty of them. If you will want to play games immediately on release, or those published by certain publishes that don't make linux releases, it doesn't make sense for you as a gaming platform.

As a day-to-day platform, I find it far superior to Windows or a Mac. However, just like in gaming, if there are certain Windows-only applications that you need, it might not make sense for you. For me, Gimp, LibreOffice, Firefox, and a few other applications all available on linux are all I really need.

Oh yeah. A lot of windows 10 useless threads these days. We have to talk about real OSs here too.
I've been using it for so long. I think it shaped my taste of games because I only like games for Linux. I tend to buy only local coop games or indie games. Hypish games like Mad Max, Call of Duty, Dark Souls, Fallout are insta-hide for me on SG.
But of course things are gonna change, and with Vulkan AAA games will swarm Linux platform.
I don't like dual booting. Since you hated windows 10 (how can one like that?), you can adopt it now. Relax, a lot of your software is gonna work on Linux. Natively or with wine.

If you're willing to learn a bit, it isn't a bad choice to start using a Linux distro.
They aren't even difficult to use nowadays, compared to 10 years ago.

My personal favourite is Linux Mint Cinnamon, it's lightweight enough to be used on a low powered machine, yet has quite a lot of useful functions. It also resemble Windows systems, so it's even easier to learn!
I temporarily used it on my main PC when Windows screwed up, while I was learning how to make a recovery USB drive.

It's a good choice for everyday uses, but for gaming... not too much.
Most games, especially AAA ones, aren't compatible, and those that are compatible, usually aren't too well optimized.

I then installed it on the family laptop, because I was tired of constantly having to clean it of bloatware and malware.
If you have friends or relatives that aren't too tech-savvy, don't need to use Windows-only software, and don't play videogames, it would be a good investment to "convert" them to Linux.

I'm running Ubuntu (Linux), OS X and Windows all on seperate devices. I really really like Linux but I mainly use it on a very old Laptop with a broken display just to test around and stuff and what I didn't like at all really is the software support. Sure you can use Wine and find replacements for software but I personally wouldn't like to have Linux as my main system.

Windows annoys me to death, it's such a buggy mess so I only use it for Steam, Spotify and Chrome.

Everything else I do on my Mac which I would call my primary device and I love it so much :P Not a stupid apple-fangirl here but with experiences in all OS's I can tell that it runs like no other.. Never had problems with anything <3

But in your situation it depends on what you want to do. If you just want to install Linux on a seperate partition, you're pretty safe.. Meaning you still have access to Windows features and games in case they don't come with Linux support.

Why not try running live off an iso, assuming you have a dvd drive. Go here : http://puppylinux.com/ , download the one you like the look of ( I like Slacko Puppy 64 ), burn it, and reboot with the cd in and bios set to boot from the dvd first. Then you can test drive and learn without messing with partitioning or anything :)

Linux and gaming don't go together, so I use mainly Windows, but I have Ubuntu on dual boot for programming purposes.

Linux is somehow like ASF - You can just follow a tutorial, use it, and have fun with it, or spend legit time into learning how it works in order to unleash it's full potential.

Personally I love Linux, all my servers are based on Debian Testing and I would not change them for anything else, especially Windows. I also use Linux on my netbook (yes, the thing that doesn't exist anymore), mostly for performance reasons - it's much faster, smoother and takes less resources than Windows.

Linux is cool, and the only thing which should be important for you choice-wise is if you're capable of running software you want to on Linux, or finding alternatives. Adobe Photoshop, Sony Vegas, majority of your Steam games won't work on Linux. On the other hand, majority of software you'd like to use probably is running on Linux or includes good alternatives - all your favourite web browsers are there, music players, video players, games from linux-friendly developers and more.

My advice is - give it a try, but choose a Linux distro that will be easy enough for beginners. Linux Mint is probably the best distro to choose right now, when you earn some Linux knowledge you'll be able to use some more complex to set up distros such as Debian. In fact, Debian is currently my favourite distro that allows full customization, while trying to keep things simplified, yet complex if needed. That's why I don't suggest it as your first one - simply because you don't know for example if you'd like Gnome 3, Gnome 2, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, Mate or any other DE installed - you don't know them, so how you can make a choice.

Everyone says that Mint is best for beginners, but in my opinion ubuntu gnome is the easiest.

I personally use UBUNTU. If you choose to use it, make sure to choose a LTS-version (usually ending with a .04 (for example 16.04). These versions have long time support.

I found it the easiest system to change to from windows. With the version 16.04 you also don't have the problem with (U)EFI bootloaders. Before, it was not that easy to make a dual boot. Now it isn't a problem anymore. It is better to deactivate secure boot in your BIOS.

And even though I don't like windows, I would really make a dual boot system, because when it comes to gaming, a lot games won't run in linux. But that's the only bad thing in my opinion. Everything else is better in linux :)

For gaming? No.
For everything else? Yes.

I use BackBox Linux. It's a pentest distro based on Xubuntu

I didn't like Win 10 at first, but now we have to use Red Hat Linux 7.2 where I work, and since then it feels like heaven when I'm using Win 10. I, along with my colleagues hate Red Hat so very very much... I don't know, maybe other distros are better, but avoid Red Hat as far as you can.

It depends on what's the purpose of the PC. I will assume that it's home use, so my opinion is no - Windows is a lot more user-friendly and has better support and overall is less frustrating. You can however install Ubuntu (which is user-friendly-ish, at least compared to other distributions) and see how you like it.