I’ve been using it as my main for months. Even as an Alpha, it’s very stable. That being said, it’s missing quite a few features that a lot of people would consider a requirement. So “ready” will heavily depend on your requirements

I’ve had installations hang a long while before eventually succeeding. I would also ensure Windows has hibernate turned off and quick boot disabled.

This should add the flathub remote to the system and then install all the existing user packages into the system level. Then removes all the user level packages.

flatpak --system remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak --system install $(flatpak list --columns=application)
flatpak --user remove $(flatpak list --columns=application)

Personally I would just pick all the ones you’d like to be global (system level) and leave the rest at the user level.

Check out GrapheneOS. They sandbox google play services so you have a lot more control over what is sent to google. Might be a good middle ground.

Now that apple has their own silicon, all the older intel based MacBooks are pretty cheap. I just replaced my wife’s 2013 MacBook Airs battery, upgraded the drive, and installed Linux. It’s been a solid little laptop. Not the fastest but there’s probably a few pro models within your price range. Just make sure to get at least a 16gb model since the ram is soldered. Might have issues with the webcam, but the wifi drivers are pretty good.

Even though I don’t typically recommend an immutable distro to people with minimal Linux experience, as a dev and a gamer I’ve been pretty happy with the various uBlue images. Bluefin is a great out of the box image for devs and the uBlue images have a lot of compatability improvements over the Fedora ostree image their based off of. Bazzite is another good one specifically built for gaming.

My personal definition of “the year of the Linux desktop” is when we hit a market share % that starts to convince companies to take Linux support seriously. I don’t think we’re that far off from that happening and if Microsoft keeps adding in these terrible “features” to windows, more people will move over. Is 2024 the year for that? Probably not but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens before 2030.

It’s not redrawing the frame, it’s more related to aligning the monitors refresh rate to the frame rate of the content being displayed. Alignment means your monitor doesn’t refresh the screen when the frame is only partially rendered (aka screen tearing).

As a few have already mentioned, a Debian based distro is a good choice, and you Mentioned vanilla Ubuntu isn't ideal do to prioritizing snaps, I would then suggest Pop!_OS or Mint. I like what System76 (Pop) is doing with their scheduler and the upcoming Cosmic DE (written in Rust and should see an alpha early next year).

Keep an eye on Pop's Cosmic desktop. Even the current customized gnome version is a nice tiling DE.

Helix, Lapce, and/or VSCodium

I've been avoiding Nvidia for a while and I generally recommend it (at least for now). I wouldn't say it's mandatory though. Nvidia support has come a long way.

That being said, if you can snag a good used amd card to replace your 3060ti then why not if you're not benefiting from the rtx features and you find your current vram is causing issues, then you do you.

You could also hold out a bit longer and see if the 6800xt becomes more affordable given the recent launch of the mid tier 7000series.

Backup all your personal data on windows prior to attempting anything. On a separate disk and cloud if possible. For cloud backups, just pick the important stuff. No need to backup steam libraries since steam servers are the backup in this case.

Like others have said, if you can use a separate disk, do that. If you can’t do that and you just want to try out Linux, use a USB live disk to test hardware compatibility and the user experience, or if you have an old laptop or desktop that isn’t being used, load Linux on that first.

Pick a popular distro for better community support. If you have a recently released laptop (less than a year old) might want to pick a distro with newer kernel for better hardware support. My personal recommendations are Pop!_OS, Fedora (both gnome and KDE versions). Both work well on newer hardware. Others you might want to try are Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

After getting Linux installed, try and keep your home partition backed up, especially if Windows is on the same disk.

Try and use Flatpak for all your apps, flathub is the web “store” for Flatpak apps.

Be open to trying the Linux alternative to apps since the windows version might not be available.

This is a new OS so expecting things to work a certain way isn’t realistic.

Most of the time a GUI is available for what you need to do, but learning the terminal is super helpful and a lot of people prefer it once they make the switch.

When searching online, try to include your distro and its version. It will help narrow down results.

If you’re gaming, check ProtonDB for game compatibility, and be willing to tinker a bit.

If you do have Nvidia graphics, Pop!_OS and other distros that bake the drivers into the disk image or install process are better for beginners.

Opinion portion: Firefox is a better holistic choice over chromium based browsers (see Google’s web environment integrity aka DRM for the web). KDE is a great desktop for people who like the Windows workflow, but I prefer Gnome. Nvidia graphics are much less problematic these days, but I still prefer amd and Intel hardware.

Life is hard; everyone is doing their best; be hard on problems and soft on people.

Good luck ;)

Second, gotta love the new rust based tools and apps getting developed. Although I’ve seen some weird formatting issues on windows. Linux version is solid though.