There are more useful hobbies than gaming, I guess. But you mentioned a novel. Novels are fiction and therefore reading them is a waste of time. By your standard, as established here, by you.
Enjoyment is a perfectly good reason to do a thing.
And nobody's advocating for Facebook here, so that horse manure is 100% beside the point.
I agree with everything but voting. Not because we ever have great options, but because sometimes there are terrifyingly bad ones, and while option A might not be at all good, option B is so much worse.
My suggestion is to use a beginner distro with easy dual boot options. Linux Mint comes to mind. Get that going and try it out. If it works for you, you can then move on to ditching your Windows install and/or using a more advanced distro.
Unless you're more of a "dive into the deep end" sort. If that's the case, grab Fedora Workstation and make sure to enable the proprietary software repositories. Fedora is stable, and the desktop will be a reminder that this isn't Windows and it won't act like it. From there, you can find help all over the place, from Fedora's documentation and forums to simple internet searches.
It takes very little effort to maintain a linux desktop. This isn't the 90s, you know. Here's a quick guide:
Install Fedora Workstation. Once a week, run sudo dnf update --refresh
Got an Nvidia graphics card? When you install Fedora, enable the non-free repositories. Actually, unless you have a reason not to, do that anyway.
Done. System up to date and more stable than Windows. And that's on what's referred to as an "intermediate" distro. A "Beginner" distro like Mint is even easier.
Oh, wait, you're a gamer you say? Well then use Nobara or Pop_OS instead. They're a bit more advanced, but nothing reading a wiki can't take care of.
Getting on a high horse and pretending Linux is as hard to use in 2023 as it was two decades ago helps no one. Not the potential new user, not the community or its reputation, no one.
I hate this RTFM/yur 2 dumb attitude more than damn near anything in the community. It's such bullshit.
Oh yes, god forbid anyone take any downtime. I can't believe all these people waste so much time on recreation! Start working the moment you get up! Work until you go to bed! If you're not putting in a 100+ hour workweek, you're just a lazy piece of shit.
I mean, I'm abjectly miserable and I'll be dead well before retirement age, but at least I'm not lazy!
Oh I like the look of that! I'm generally very happy with how Gnome looks/works and don't use extensions that modify the UI, but if someone slapped together on that did this, I might actually use it.
Almost Daily. It's a manifestation of my persistent melancholic depression. At some point, at least once almost every day, I'll spend some time more or less paralyzed thinking about strangelets or meteor strikes or other shit that can wipe out the world and there's nothing we can do about it. I'll then go looking for more reasons to just not bother living if I can get off the couch.
I like how this manages to be both transphobic and like insanely sexist. Way to go, FIDE! Can you guys work homophobia or racism in there for a hat trick?
I use two windows side by side. To be honest, I've never really gotten into tabs in a file manager, and split view isn't much better. Neither one is as easy for me as just ctrl-n into a new window.
Everyone is different. It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round, as the saying goes.
There are more useful hobbies than gaming, I guess. But you mentioned a novel. Novels are fiction and therefore reading them is a waste of time. By your standard, as established here, by you.
Enjoyment is a perfectly good reason to do a thing.
And nobody's advocating for Facebook here, so that horse manure is 100% beside the point.
Edit: I suck at proofreading