Linux

I did not read the content of your post - and the answer is YES!

On lemmy u will always get a yes for that question lol.

Checkout distrosea.com, u can test different linux distros through your browser. This saves u alot of time in testing distros.

U will want to install steam either way. Their proton layer works great to run acquired booty. If u have questions on how, lemmy know.

Yes

That's like asking, "Hey, guys! Should I eat a hamburger?" -- you want to use linux because you find it useful, or because "everyone is doing it" and you want to feel included? If it's the former... then by all means, do it. The learning curve may be confusing at first (considering most windows users have a "duck syndrome" -- expecting linux to behave the same as windows), but it's totally worth it.

Yes. Keep the old box for games on Windows only and try out stuff on Linux.

Be sure the laptop hardware is fully compatible. It is not worth thetime to work around crappy hardware. If it isn't, buy a refurbished Thinkpad.

Yes switch to garuda Linux now!!

Sure you can, but gtx 1650 is not cutting it if you wanna play modern "AAA" games even on low settings 1080p unless you sacrifice resolution, as for everything else you should be fine

Use something else instead of Brave

If you are going to try Linux from a USB drive as suggested by others here try and get a USB3 drive. Most of the cheap USB drives are USB2 which is really too slow to be of use.

Just try and see how it goes - it's not like you can't go back

Unfortunately, no.

Due to the year of the linux desktop, new user applications have been closed. The overwhelming positive response has just completely bypassed the available seats.

I’m sorry, but we’re full.

You should switch to Firefox with ublock origin.

Brave is a mess of a browser and a dumpster fire of an organization, even compared to the famously dysfuctional Mozilla.

You can look up your games on ProtonDB and see which will and won't work. Pirated games are no different from retail compatibility-wise but there might be one or two extra steps

Grab a few usb sticks and put different images on them to try some different OS's. Get a feel for how easy they are to install / config / use.

Then put your favorite on your internal drive, and maybe keep a couple of specialized sticks for whatever: troubleshooting, browsing, streaming, gaming, office...

Hey OP, I did not read your post but the answer is "hell yes"

Yes.

I would also recommend against using Brave, but it's available on Linux if you want to use it.

Pirated games work just fine with Heroic, Lutris or Bottles.I personally like Heroic and I've not had many issues with steamrip releases (they don't need to be installed).

yeah you should

you should definitely try it out and see if you like it; try various distros and desktops

the distros id recommend are fedora (simply good), opensuse tubleweed (versatile and unobtrusive), cachyos (designed for gaming), bazzite (fedora-based steamOS clone, designed for gaming), or mint (very easy), and the de id recommend is kde plasma

can keep windows on a separate drive to boot for the games that dont work (and in case u want to switch back)

but if ur pirating, those wont be kernel anticheat games, which are the main offenders

The switch or dual boot is up to you. I can lay out some general steps in case you want to have an overview. Please do not be scared off by it. Depending on the distro, most things work out of the box or with very little effort.

1. familiarize
   • look up some distros, I personally like to go Arch-based, but feel free to use whatever seems good and popular enough (please no Ubuntu)
   • try virtual machine and then live ISO
2. verify compatibility
   • this one is a bit more work, basically try all functionality in the live ISO, or at least things like display, mouse, keyboard, touchpad, Wi-Fi, storage
3. install
   • you probably won't need to look into this super deep, default installers handle this pretty well
   • formatting and partitioning (look into ArchWiki guide, you probably don't need swap partition)
   • if you are going to be reinstalling look into using efibootmgr to possibly clear up old and fix existing boot entries (i had to enable boot flag after setting up dualboot, because macOS installer overwrote the previous settings, thanks Apple :-) )
4. configure missing/not working OS stuff
   • look for missing drivers and system management software for either your specific hardware or some more general ones
   • best sources are wikis like ArchWiki (even if you don't use Arch), forums and some software search sites like AlternativeTo
   • in some cases the software does not meet the requirements for a wiki page to be up (Xlibre being notable example - feel free to look up the whole story)
   • you may have to put some time into getting GPU fully working, since nvidia has several driver options depending on the GPU
   • I personally had to fix USB autosuspend config, only look into it if devices plugged in after boot are not being detected
5. use
   • installs and updates are done using package manager (windows has winget, btw)
   • for windows games use Wine or rather some of its forks
   • most of the people already shared their recommendations for this part

It's like getting children. You only know afterwards how it really feels and even if it's a hassle sometimes you wouldn't ever change back.

should i switch to linux?

So, as this is a Linux community, do you expect anything but an astounding "Yes!".

Going through the rest of your post, you'd have to be cautious with the Nvidia GPU. It can go anywhere from working almost seamlessly without any tinkering to causing nigh-unsolvable problems you (regretfully) might have to work around.

But, aside from that, you should be pretty much good to go.

Give it a go, playing your pirated games is more effort to setup a wine container for them but if you don't like it then you can go back.

Just try it out for a bit. If you don't like it, switch back. That's it. It's not one of lifes major decisions.

if it meets your software needs and hardware compatibility, go for it

It sounds like you would enjoy Linux though you should at least know that running your games will need additional hoops comparing to Windows since they're Windows games, nothing something wild and will be mostly about changing the default WINE to Proton if you use Lutris or Heroic for them. However sometimes you will probably need to troubleshoot for some game time to time, but you'll get used to that once you learn the idea.

Linux Mint is likely the safest choice here. Zorin is also fine for newbies.

Also note that, a lot of things will be different than Windows, though you can always search for an equivalent for something you used. At least the structure is much more beautiful on Linux, unlike Windows' chaotic nature.