Hello, friend. There will be gatekeepers in any community, but there are many Linux users willing to share their knowledge and experience with others.

I think the best way to adopt Linux is to jump in with both feet. Your productivity will take a hit for a while, but will grow as you learn how to do your daily tasks in Linux. Dual-booting is a complicated trap, and running a virtual machine is cumbersome. Buying or assembling a new machine dedicated to Linux will make switching easier. Normal internet browsing and web-based applications will generally work without problems, but you should check for any Windows-only applications that you can’t live without. Gaming on Linux is better than it ever has been, but there are some games that just won’t run on Linux. Avoid Nvidia graphics due to driver complexities.

Here are a couple of articles that might help: https://www.zdnet.com/article/thinking-about-switching-to-linux-things-you-need-to-know/ https://drewdevault.com/2021/12/05/How-new-Linux-users-succeed.html

While I wouldn’t recommend Arch for a new user, their wiki has a lot of deep technical info adaptable to most distros. https://wiki.archlinux.org/