You might not see it right now, but you have a lot of options.
First of all, you can dual boot Windows and Linux on a shared computer, but recently Windows made that process quite unstable and risky (though I don't speak from first-hand experience, so take this with a grain of salt). Setting this up should be relatively easy, as most? linux installers can see a Windows installation. From there it's as simple as selecting a menu option at startup.
Secondly, you can install Linux (I'd recommend a beginner friendly distro such as Linux Mint or ZorinOS, or a gaming focused one like Bazzite) and create a Windows virtual machine. There is also a project called WinApps which lets you run Windows apps directly on Linux (using a virtual machine), though setting this up is PAIN. Further the setbacks of virtual machines are pedictively that you are running 2 operating systems at once, so it's nearly unfeasable to deploy them on devices with lower memory and/or slower cpus. Even further you'd need to enable 3d acceleration (as in using the gpu in the virtual machine) for games, which is again nontrivial.
Your third option is seeing whether you have any alternatives. You could be surprised by how many great alternatives are out there which work perfectly fine on Linux. As I have seen widely used softwares are available under Linux in one way or another (major exceptions include Adobe stuff), and a surprising amount of games do indeed run under Linux (an operating system they weren't designed for) thanks to the efforts of Valve at al. and the Proton emulation layer.
Suppose none of the aforementioned options work for you, you can still stay with Windows. Operating systems (however broken or commercialised they might become) ultimately serve the user, and at the end of the day, we need something that works. If you'd take this path, rest assured, there IS a thing called WSL (or Windows Subsystem for Linux) which is a Linux emulation layer (or virtual machine, I'm not an expert on this) on Windows (so Linux Subsystem for Windows would be a better name for it, but I digress).
These are just a few of your available options, you can mix and match these, or disregard them altogether. I can recommend you Alternativeto, which is a website that suggests alternatives to popular proprietary software; another interesting site would be Distrowatch, which shows you information about various Linux distributons (but again I'd recommenf Linux Mint or Bazzite for your use case). Lastly, take care and use what works for you. Peace!
You might not see it right now, but you have a lot of options.
First of all, you can dual boot Windows and Linux on a shared computer, but recently Windows made that process quite unstable and risky (though I don't speak from first-hand experience, so take this with a grain of salt). Setting this up should be relatively easy, as most? linux installers can see a Windows installation. From there it's as simple as selecting a menu option at startup.
Secondly, you can install Linux (I'd recommend a beginner friendly distro such as Linux Mint or ZorinOS, or a gaming focused one like Bazzite) and create a Windows virtual machine. There is also a project called WinApps which lets you run Windows apps directly on Linux (using a virtual machine), though setting this up is PAIN. Further the setbacks of virtual machines are pedictively that you are running 2 operating systems at once, so it's nearly unfeasable to deploy them on devices with lower memory and/or slower cpus. Even further you'd need to enable 3d acceleration (as in using the gpu in the virtual machine) for games, which is again nontrivial.
Your third option is seeing whether you have any alternatives. You could be surprised by how many great alternatives are out there which work perfectly fine on Linux. As I have seen widely used softwares are available under Linux in one way or another (major exceptions include Adobe stuff), and a surprising amount of games do indeed run under Linux (an operating system they weren't designed for) thanks to the efforts of Valve at al. and the Proton emulation layer.
Suppose none of the aforementioned options work for you, you can still stay with Windows. Operating systems (however broken or commercialised they might become) ultimately serve the user, and at the end of the day, we need something that works. If you'd take this path, rest assured, there IS a thing called WSL (or Windows Subsystem for Linux) which is a Linux emulation layer (or virtual machine, I'm not an expert on this) on Windows (so Linux Subsystem for Windows would be a better name for it, but I digress).
These are just a few of your available options, you can mix and match these, or disregard them altogether. I can recommend you Alternativeto, which is a website that suggests alternatives to popular proprietary software; another interesting site would be Distrowatch, which shows you information about various Linux distributons (but again I'd recommenf Linux Mint or Bazzite for your use case). Lastly, take care and use what works for you. Peace!