XFCE or LxQT > MATE in my opinion, but if I was trying to make a lean system I would just use a tiling wm, probably sway.

NTFS drives can be used by both Windows and Linux (you might need to install a driver for the latter but most user-friendly distros include them out of the box). So yes, if you have storage drives you’ll still be able to access them from both sides.

There can be weird issues sometimes with this setup, usually as a result of Windows freaking out because Linux modified some file, but it’s rarely anything severe. Personally I just flipped all my drives to Linux filesystems because they’re nicer for several purposes and I am actively trying to avoid ever using Windows again at this point.

There’s a third party alternative to the Epic launcher called Heroic, works pretty great. Also apparently Roblox works with something called “Sober” – no idea what that is just regurgitating other comments.

Usually the bootloader is only on one drive regardless. Keeping them on separate physical drives can be nice for simplicity but there’s no reason you can’t put them on the same drive.

Check all the games on ProtonDB, but from what you listed that should all be pretty easy to get working on Linux. 95% of Steam games just work out of the box, with most exceptions being competitive MP games with aggressive anti-cheat. If it’s not a steam game, it’s still likely pretty easy to run, but you might have to use a third party launcher or something depending on what storefront it’s from.

That’s what makes software legacy; it falls out of popularity. Plenty of terminal applications have barely changed since the 80s, but they’re not “legacy” because they’re actively used and maintained.

If you never played Magicka you should give it a shot.

Needs more UFO50, it’s like the dream game for the steam deck.

Tekken.

Switched back to Linux this week and I couldn’t be happier.

Which games/mods are you talking about? It’s very rare for mods to not work if the game works, you might just need to find an alternate application somewhere in the chain

It’s gonna be way less hassle to just use Linux. The gaming situation is so vastly improved from 6 or so years ago, and the vast majority of games just work, with a large amount of the rest only needing minor tweaks.

The big exceptions are in competitive gaming, and even there it’s pretty much limited to proprietary & intrusive anti-cheats that I wouldn’t have installed on my Windows computer anyway; Riot’s Vanguard and FACEIT are probably the two big ones. Also Fortnite – even though EasyAntiCheat does work fine with Linux, Epic has chosen to explicitly not support it. If you do play one of those few games – or use other proprietary software like the Adobe suite that also won’t work – a dual boot should be fine, it only takes maybe two minutes to swap over and unless you have two beefy GPUs you’ll be limited in a KVM setup.

That’s absurd. You don’t need to understand the inner workings of the kernel to know what a root account is. If you’re regularly encouraging people to install a new OS when you aren’t even confident in their ability to understand what a root account is, you’re not doing them any favors.

If you’re installing an OS you should absolutely understand what the root account is. That’s like buying a car without understanding the concept of keys.