linuxmemes

Pop in a bootable usb and check.

On the order of an hour, unless you've got some especially exotic or crummy hardware in there.

It really depends on your devices and what you want to do with them.

What I've noticed so far is that the generic drivers on Linux seem to cover more functionality (eg, my mouse didn't show battery status on windows without the proprietary drivers but it shows up in Linux), but if it's not covered by that, then odds are support will be more limited or none on Linux unless it's commonly owned.

Though depending on what kind of data your devices are dealing with, it might not be that bad to get it working. Like audio data is just a time series of amplitudes (though codecs can complicate that if you're dealing with some digital format), input devices are usually some combination of button press events and axis updates (and controller vibrate is pretty much just a lower bitrate audio signal). Video can be more complicated, but there's likely software that can understand whatever stream of data it gives off. But this all depends on patience and skill, and if you were the type to gravitate to something like that, you probably would have already switched.

For me it's pretty much plug and play with Linux mint. Had some problems with vr and integrated graphics but just disabled them in BIOS and runs fine. You can try dual booting mint and see for yourself, just make windows portion smaller through windows and install mint in the empty partition. I'm not that tech savy still but I can search online. Feel free to ask anything but today Linux might be easier than windows to understand how to use unless the develepor actively dislikes Linux. Currently using cachyOS and I enjoy it but it is for more advanced users. Just need to know few basic konsole commands and find name of the package you want to install. I'm still very dumb in most things Linux but there are tutorials and forums that most likely have people with same or similar issues you might encounter.

Zero. Either works or it doesn't. More likely to just work. The not just work situations happen when it's hardware too recent or some manufacturer that has fucked bad like doing weird things in their hardware for cameras or sound or something like that. That happened in the older days, almost 99% happening with anything nvidia related. Eventually one starts to know which hardware is good and which manufacturers suck and you start buying things that work from the start in later years of living.