Well the year of the Linux desktop will have to wait a few years considering Valve time.

It is a move to decouple from the USA for critical infrastructure. They don’t want to be in a similar situation as Ukraine in any potential conflict. Where the USA just says we will no longer allow you to use our computer chips for war with Russia.

Personally, I think you are probably stuck with Windows for now, since I imagine you really don’t want to learn a whole slew of new programs (that might or might not do everything you want) in my very uninformed opinion.

Internet connectivity should be mostly fine but that can depend on hardware sometimes.

Gaming is in general not a problem if you have Steam, Heroic, Lutris, Bottles and Protonup QT. But look into ProtonDB to see which runs and which doesn’t.

But for much of the professional software it will become a hassle. You could look into CrossOver by Codeweavers (a paid version of Wine) and see what compatability that brings. But for the most part I think you would probably have to setup a Windows Virtual Machine with GPU Passthrough.

I must say, I must have gotten lucky for years while gaming because I had never experienced stick drift and only heard of it in the last few years.

Broken buttons, that I did experience.

Considering it is free to use, with streaming, voice/video calling , it surprises me that the enshitification didn’t start earlier.

Let’s hope Europe stars investigating Google as a gatekeeper. That seemed to work miracles on Apple.