I am a windows 10 22H2 user, these are my system hardware specifications:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core Processor, 3200 Mhz.
RAM: 16 GB of RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

My PC meets the official hardware requirements for windows 11 (i checked it using pc health check tool), when windows 10 ends support, should i upgrade to windows 11 or switch to Linux?

How much do you use Windows, against how much do you use your Linux virtual machines, that should answer your question....

When Windows crawls on your hardware, then I would suggest seriously consider changing.

Try a Linux VM first, or try WSL.

Ask yourself, why did you buy a Windows Machine instead of Linux?

Then you decide.

But you can always try Linux on a VM, on a Docker or on WSL.

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WSL is intended by design to deliver a substandard experience, so I would contradict the advice above. Likewise running it in a VM can be less than desirable if you want to really know what it feels like to run it as a proper desktop. Also they are not so easy to set up as a normal Linux installation is.

However, running live versions of distros on your short list will give an experience much closer to how it would run when actually installed. You can even make a lot of changes as long as you don't need to reboot.

The short list ought to include at least Linux Mint, which has live version with its installer images:

https://linuxmint.com/download.php

With that you can boot to the various editions of Linux Mint and test some of the more popular desktop environments and their defaults.

Samdasti,

Welcome to LQ forums.

Do you have particular programs in Windows which are essential for you?

Is similar software available in Linux?

We would have a much better idea on how to advise you if you told us exactly what the main uses of your Windows computer are, excepting web browsing and emails.

The other thing to note is that Nvidia graphics and Linux sometimes don't work well together.

WSL is a fine tool for allowing Win users to try a Linux experience without the trauma of configuring a hypervisor. It's a true Windows subsystem - it uses Windows APIs and is supported by M$oft and (I guess still) Canonical.
For my needs it has been great since its beta release. I haven't used a "real" virtualiser (VMWare/Hyper-V/VBox) for Linux guests on Windows in years. Home user only I should add ...

Over the last 25 years I've run linux - stand alone, dual boot, live and as virtual machines. WSL is a great way to learn linux commandline basics and , according to the web, integrate easily with Win 11 if you go that route.

I would say that, unless you must use some types of programs not available outside of the Windows/Mac ecosystem (such as, to pick one, Adobe Pagemaker) and

• given the route MS seems to be taking regarding privacy and
  
• forcing users to license, rather than purchase applications,,

switching is certainly worth a look.

Your machine is certainly brawny enough for any major Linux distro. The only thing you way to look into is support for your video card. Nvidia works with Linux, but sometimes it can take a couple of extra steps, and some distros provide better out-of-the-box support for Nvidia than others.

I second the advice to try some distros you are interested in virtual machines or LIVE CD/USB mode to help you decide which one you would like to try. Here in the "Newbie" forum there are some sticky threads (they are "stuck" to the top of the forum) with suggestions about how to pick a distro.

Just my two cents.

Also,

• given the forced advertising in the desktop editions

There are few reasons not to investigate upgrading to Linux. If the legacy OS is still needed, it can be relegated to a guest VM on a Linux host to take advantage of snapshots so that it becomes trivial to roll back to a last-known-good state when (not if) it curdles or gets hit with malware.

No one can answer that question because we are not you. We don't know if you're a die-hard gamer, a MS office user, an adobe products user or have specialty hardware.

All you can do is create a liveDVD/USB, boot into it and try it. Or install in a Virtual machine.

Read this

The GTX 660 works great w/ stock nouveau driver. I upgraded my GPU to 3080 and sadly cannot use nouveau anymore.

You need to learn linux if you want to use. It is not windows. http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
Otherwise you can definitely move, if you wish.

To my way of thinking, "the operating system" is a means to an end – not an end unto itself. If there are particular applications that you regularly use, for which "[XX] is the best or maybe the only option for running it, that's sufficient reason to invest in an "[XX]" license (if any) and to dedicate a particular machine (real or virtual) for running "[XX]."

Mac hardware is still more expensive, but equipment that can run Windows or Linux very well has almost become "dirt cheap." If you still need Windows, or simply feel sufficiently productive with it, then keep it as long as you can.

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