Since when is OpenBSD a Linux variant! :D

The main reason I use OpenBSD is precisely that it is user-friendly and doesn't require much tweaking and crap at all, it just works. The main reason I don't recommend OpenBSD to most people is that it doesn't do what they expect it to do.

You can easily try a few linux distros by making a live USB and see what fits.

Personally I'd suggest givng ZorinOS a look as its rather familiar when coming from windows.

Edit: Explaining Computers on youtube also has some decent, accesible videos on different variations: https://www.youtube.com/user/explainingcomputers

True. Though I've had few issues of my own moving to/from xls format.

Surprisingly, distro doesn't matter much, they're pretty much the same in terms of privacy and security (really good). And you can certainly customise/install additional stuff to make them on-par with each other.

Do yourself a favour though, pick one that's fairly friendly to new users and is well supported across the web and different software. Basically this means some form of Ubuntu or maybe Linux Mint. I would not go Arch-based distro as a first Linux experience, so no Arch or Manjaro btw. Yet ;)

For example, Ubuntu MATE is very lightweight with no frills. Whereas Kubuntu is very pretty and customisable, though still surprisingly low on resources.

Setup and installation is easy - once distro is installed, get Firefox and set it up with ublock Origin, webRTC disabled, httpS everywhere, and setup a firewall if you like (ufw for example).Now those pesky advertisers can't track and hound you if you prefer, mwahaha. No 'I KNOW WHAT YOU HAD FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT' creepy tailored ads. Personally, I don't even care anymore about cookies and tracking, as my Android phone is a data collector for Google anyways. But I can at least appreciate people who are tired of it. I think you're asking about software compatibility across distros? If so, then:

Pretty much most software for Linux is made to work primarily on Ubuntu, but works well on any distro. How? Well for Arch/Manjaro, there are people who package them in a nice community user repo, AUR, where you can just get all the software and install them easily. Then there's distro-agnostic packages through Flatpak or Snap which are becoming more popular. And the rest are packaged by the devs themselves or by some contributing user. In fact, it's very rare to not be able to install a piece of Linux software on most distros.

So I would say, compatibility across distros is not an issue to be worried about.

However, if you meant Windows software on Linux, that's a different story. Even though you can get most things to work, many flawlessly, things like Microsoft Office or the Adobe Suite is a no-go. So if you rely on them, are a graphical designer or just can't give up or find an alternative for Excel - then stick with Windows. Or at least dual-boot.

Same applies to some anti-cheat multiplayer games (Valorant, Apex Legends and Rainbow Six Siege etc.). The aggressive anti-cheat won't allow Wine to make it work on Linux.

Otherwise, you'd be pleasantly surprised how stuff just works and how you can customise and tinker with everything. It's quite addictive and liberating.

Or even easier, install VirtualBox on your PC and with it you can easily install and remove as many Linux distros (or any other OSes for that matter) as you want and run them side by side straight from your Windows desktop.

Thats assuming you have the system resources...

Naturally, and that you have Windows or some other OS already installed as the host OS.

Anyway, running VirtualBox and one Linux on it doesn't require any beefy machine, pretty much any cheap laptop etc. will do. Definitely if the PC can run Windows 10 comfortably, I don't think there is any problem trying out different Linux distros on VirtualBox.

EDIT: However, running Linux in a virtual machine is good for trying out the features of different Linux distros, while your live USB method is good for trying how well that Linux works on your PC though.

Whoa! You all gave me a lot of great information, and it's all very helpful. I'll address it momentarily, but first I should clarify just a couple things that I probably should have said in the first place (sorry):

- What I'm probably going to do is make a small partition of my hard drive, install Linux on that, and use it just for the Internet and anything that I want to download (including Windows games from this website), and really not much else. Then I'll restart in Windows and play the games and use software, but with the Internet completely disabled, so that I don't have to worry about spyware at all.

- However, my issue about compatibility was partially a curiosity about whether I could get some games to work in Linux (though I don't know if it would be necessary at all), and partially because I would like to test some Java programs to make sure that they can run in Linux as well as Windows (theoretically they should be able to though).

- In addition to avoiding telemetry, I want to make sure to avoid other things that could potentially be problematic for other reasons, such as clipboard history and a universal clipboard. Does anyone know if any of these versions of Linux even support those things, and if so, how to disable them?

- I also will need to completely disable the virtual memory paging file/swap file (I have tons of RAM anyway), any sort of hibernation mode, or for that matter, anything that will take the contents of RAM and arbitrarily save it to the hard drive whenever it feels like it.

- Whichever one I choose, I may also want to recommend it to other people (for simple uses) who are not necessarily great with computers (they're not programmers or anything like that), so it would be nice if even a layman could use it.

Now to address you individually (also, anyone feel free to read all of this if you want, because you might be able to answer a question even if I asked someone else):

Engerek01, thanks for a lot of useful information, and I've read through some of the websites, so I should be able to get some good information from that. As for downloading and compiling source code, no thanks, because I'm not familiar with this specific stuff and how it works, and I know it could easily turn out wrong.

morrowslant, Incognito sounds very interesting, but is it easy to set up and use?

rtcvb32, you've mentioned several different ones, but I'm having trouble determining which one you recommend the most or the least.

Lin545, Guix sounds good, but is it easy to set up and use? When you say I have to write my own configuration file it seems like the answer is no.

kusumahendra, a lot of people seem to be recommending Mint, but do you know if it tracks searches the way that plain Ubuntu evidently does (according to an article in one of the posted links)? Also, I've actually been using Libre Office in Windows (the newest version of Office that I have is 2000 and that seemed a bit outdated), and I'd say that for the most part it works well, except that the spell-checker is HORRIBLE!

huppumies, this is very important: does Mint have the same problem with tracking as Ubuntu does, or are there any other privacy concerns with Mint?

nightcraw1er, it is possible to avoid this kind of crap, but one must go to great lengths.

timppu, well, when I try to disable updates it keeps re-enabling them. I even changed the program that does the auto-updates to give it fake credentials, trying to trick it into thinking that it doesn't have the authority to run, but it still keeps re-enabling it! And I'm using Pro version, btw. Yeah I'm leaning towards Mint I think, but I'll ask you as well: are there any privacy issues with Mint, such as how Ubuntu tracks text/file searches? This was mentioned in an article, and you've given a couple examples about how Mint is more private (thanks for the info) but you didn't mention that specifically, and it's a very important issue for me.

Ganni1987, thanks for your opinion, and I'll take that into consideration as well.

aRealCyborg, alright, so you don't like Ubuntu, but you like the variant Mint, though you've never tested it... well, I'm not sure what to say to that exactly, though the opinion seems to be fairly consistent with what a lot of other people are saying anyway.

Sachys, watching videos to compare them - that may be a good idea, but a lot of what's important in an OS is what it does behind the scenes, not just the interface.

rojimboo, alright, I'll avoid anything that's Arch and lean toward Mint (as long as it doesn't have any privacy problems that I'm not yet aware of). As for your advice about what to do with Firefox, Origin, webRTC, ufw, etc., I'm really not sure that I followed any of that. I'm a technical person with a lot of knowledge about computers so you don't need to dumb anything down for me, but I think you just abbreviated the explanation too much and mentioned a lot of things that I'd never heard of (except Firefox). And no, I wasn't going to try to run Windows programs on Linux.

timppu, I guess I could try that, but I've never installed a virtual box before, so I'm not sure about that, and it seems like a lot of work to install like 10 different versions of Linux (well, maybe not that many) to ultimately pick one, when I could just research them and decide that way. But to answer your question about the quality of my computer, it's pretty high-end and only a couple of months old, so that shouldn't be an issue, anyway

EDIT: also, it needs to be possible for me to disable the Internet connection altogether, whenever I feel like it, without having to unplug anything.

You can satisfy some curiosity by clicking around a bit here.
https://distrotest.net/

Personally I use Linux Mint and I'm happy with my choice. Very easy to transition to from Windows and it works the way I expect it to, my experience with it is solid all over.
https://linuxmint.com/

Speaking of Mint, I would recommend reading this excellent thread on the subject.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_mint_beginners_guide/page1

If I used Nvidia, I would consider Pop!_OS instead due to it "just working" from what I've heard. It seems to be a solid choice as well.
https://pop.system76.com/

Anything to get more people using BSD variants. :>

People say that they want privacy but get angry when privacy settings prevent them from doing things.

When you install Linux, choose to do manual partitioning and don't create a swap partition; this will also prevent hibernation.

It's actually weird for me to recommend Mint since I haven't use it in a very long time. I'm now using Manjaro since with Manjaro I can just update it till my PC breaks and not worry about reinstalling new version.I recommend Mint because it's a beginner friendly package. Good looking, easy to use with many useful default software.

I don't know if Mint tracks our search or not but I think that generally doesn't happen in Linux. Especially with community driven one. And I haven't read anything controversial about tracking in Linux since the article above about Amazon search and Ubuntu, I was using it when Amazon was included in Ubuntu. Back then disabling it was easy and it went away forever (unlike with current Win10). But we are (almost) always tracked anyway when we're connected to Internet. Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. All website owns by big company simply tracks us in every way they can.

If Adamhm reply to this thread you should ask him more. He wrote that excellent guide and very knowledgeable in Linux especially Mint.

ok my bad, I have used both Ubuntu and Mint, I used Ubuntu as a main driver for a bit, I used Mine a bit just not enough to say much about it, it feels nice but I only really used OpenSUSE for the last few years and I love OpenSUSE.

Mint does not have tracking, Ubuntu doesn't have any rn I think but... they have done it in the past.
Most if not all Distros have no form of telemetry unless you send them info like a bug or crash report.

And it is a smart idea to duel boot, I always duel boot my systems.
First started with a small HDD size for Linux but after I learned how to use it and all that stuff it is most my hard drive space because windows games can take a lot of space.


Look into Lutris and Legendary launcher for gaming as well.

You seem to not understand.. Nixos and Guix are completely different principle OSes. Its not like Windows or its Dos variants, its functional. You write a config file, OS assembles itself where program or its options are arguments of expression which defines your OS. You don't even have to reinstall an OS for decades, because each update is technically a new OS that needs no input from you. But one either likes this approach or the imperative one, but its the laziest OS ever.

By all means gives Linux a try, I certainly did, but eventually I always come back to windows. I would suggest giving LTSC a go. It's a lot easier to control than pro and I can send some scripts to permanently disable a lot of a functions if you like.