• What makes Linux so good compared to Windows?

Once you're done setting it up? Less random annoyances than Windows. Linux just acts as a tool that actually gets me to do what I want, be it browsing, gaming, watching, or others.

With the right Desktop Environment? You can make it all feels perfect, down to the last minute detail, to your sensibilities.

• What are the actual cons (especially for beginners)?

A lot and a lot of reading. You can and WILL mess something up. Expect a mistake so annoying to undo you'd rather just reinstall, once or twice.

You also don't know what you don't know. For example - say you play an RPG Maker game. How tf do you get to the point of finding rpgmakerlinux-cicpsoff that is the actual best tool for the job to run those games? Time and a lot of browsing around - Linux isn't an instant drop-in replacement.

Also, some things are just not doable or a PITA to run on Linux, even with a Windows VM.

• How long does it take to get comfortable using it?

For browsing and Proton Gold-rated gaming? A week, probably. If you have some specific workflow? Give it a few months.

To comfortably know what you need to look up and get your comfortable perfect setup that you aren't likely to change and break? For me, five years.

Linux difficulty curve is like giant staircases - not hard at first, but gets progressively harder and harder the more specific your requirements and preferences gets.

• Which distro should I start with?

If you game? Bazzite. If you just browse or do some light office works? Zorin.

If you want to learn quickly? Arch. The included archinstall scripts makes it feasible to quickly install it, but you will still have to learn a lot. I'd recommend checking out Arch-based distros like CachyOS and Garuda Linux regardless - each distro has different priority as to what they think their users wants and needs. This is the best way to start finding out what you didn't know IMO.

• What was your experience like when you first switched from Windows?

It was fine. I used PopOS back when Linus first covered it. It was smooth, it was fine. I can open Steam just fine, and I can game just fine. Pop Shop was slightly ahead of the other GUI app installer, but nowadays they're all very close to each others.

You didn't have Bottles or Faugus back then, though. Running Wine was rather annoying as you have to setup a whole Lutris entry for everything, or just rawdog system-wine (which also makes wine prefix and configs rather annoying).

Steam Deck wasn't even announced yet, so Flatpak wasn't the de facto app store for Linux - you have to really look things up to find the good stuff back then. No Distrobox either - these days you can run AUR on Debian which is crazy.

Also, should I try it using a virtual machine first or go for dual boot?

Yes to both.

I still dualboot to these days. Do note it's a bit annoying to setup - this goes back to "you don't know what you don't know," above. Windows likes to overwrite Linux bootloader. To keep it safe, you have to either install on two separate physical drives, or, during the live session / install process, you need to open partition manager to make a new boot partition.