I personally recommend Mint as the out-of-the-box experience is very familiar to a Windows user and the OS comes with everything one would expect a desktop OS to have pre-installed. That said, don’t stress too hard over the distro. This isn’t like Windows vs MacOS where everything is completely different. No, basically all your knowledge of one distro is transferable to another distro if you decide to change it up in the future.

At this point, I just assume a game works in Linux unless proven otherwise. There are some that won’t, mostly games that use kernel-level anti-cheats and specifically disable the game if running in Linux. There are only a few dozen games total that fit this description.

Linux is less of a resource hog than Windows, so if your computer is strong enough for Windows, it will work fine on Linux.

Dual booting using two different drives is generally the way to go. Doing two different partitions works, but Windows really, really hates other OSes being installed along side it, even other Windows installs. Gaming is my primary pastime and I haven’t booted into my Windows drive in months. From my experience for the average person, a dual boot is only something you will want temporarily as you get used to the unfamiliar OS.

Good luck on your swap. I’m damn happy I did it and hope you will be too!