My dot files stay with me. I've never been into sharing my dot files. Privacy and I'd rather help someone do something similar if they are interested instead of sharing a dot file.

There's no reason to hope that you can change to a new operating system and you can copy paste exactly what you did in the other, completely different operating system. However that doesn't mean its hard. There are distros that make it really easy to transition too. I had a really easy moving over, but I was fine with adapting to new workflows and software and OS.

I run Linux while having 3 kids, my fiancee, a full time job that has a lot of OT, family health issues I have to support etc. Life is always busy and will always be busy. I pace myself with what I want to learn based on how busy my life is at that time. Not pacing I would burn out. I advise the same.

I also think being pissed off at Microsoft isn't enough to get into Linux for the long term. Its enough to just start. You need to be able to want to learn something new because if you make the switch, run into an issue with some distro, can't get past it, you'll end up right back where you left off.

Best of luck either way. Definitely do your research first and follow good rules for backing up your data.

My first experience with window managers was Awesome WM and now I'm back on it and I can't find myself able to go back to Sway(my favorite Wayland window manager) or only use XFCE(my favorite desktop environment). I'm just too comfortable everytime I come back.

Trial and error as long as it isn't a professional need. At some point you just have to try and see what works for your machine and needs.

And even though I have seen that the average price of machines with Linux preinstalled may be close to some machines with Windows, I would guess that most people are going to go with the latter. Easier access to purchase one, familiarity etc.

I recently switched to Void after making runs with Arch and Fedora.

I'm not anti-systemd. I just like Void. Rolling release model. Light weight. Minimalistic. I've read how the package manager is small but for me everything I need is there. That's the first time that's happened for me as with other distros I would have had to install via flatpak, snap by source, appimage and by the package manager.

Not sure if that would work for your use case or not.

Void. Minimal, all the programs I need are in the repos, which is a first for me. Very fast.