I recommend downloading the latest Linux Mint .iso file and using Rufus to create a bootable, live USB drive. Also, if your computer has an internal d: drive, I would recommend using that entire drive, instead of dual-booting from c: (I had a bad experience removing Linux from a dual boot system and getting the partitions back to normal). This way, you're not touching anything on your windows (c:) drive.

If you’re really worried about messing up your c: drive, you can physically disconnect it while you’re installing Linux, so the Live installer only has one choice for installation. After you've installed Linux, change your boot order in BIOS to boot from your d: drive first. Once you’re sure Linux is working correctly, you can run “sudo update-grub” which will add your c: drive to the boot menu on the d: drive. This allows you to dual boot into either OS without touching anything on your c: drive (so the boot menu will be on d:, your linux drive). Grub will let you choose between continuing to boot from d: or to boot windows on c: without you having to change the boot order every time in BIOS.

If you use Steam to manage your games library, you're really going to like that Steam has been developing a proprietary Wine wrapper, called Proton, which lets you run all your Steam games from Linux. Steam also has a native linux client. So all the Steam games you backed up on windows, you can restore on Linux. I've run everything from Unreal Gold, to Witcher 3 to Techtonica to Fallout 4 without any problems.

::: filesystem's Linux uses a fuckton of different filesystems for different functions (Linux is at its core -simple, but it is voluminous in the knowledge base - 15 years later and I'm still going, 'oh, that's cool, I didn't know I could do that) Anyway, the main fs on Linux is ext4, but it can read/write/modify NTFS, fat, vfs, luks, and on and on. Windows does NTFS and fat. :::

::: don't be scared The terminal is actually, really, truly, for real, your best friend and portal to power potential :::

Resources may seem overwhelming at first. Linux uses a lot of words to do things. The GUI has gotten prettier, but the real customisation comes in text files(all of Linux is text files) there's not registry that is mostly unreadable/unusable.

Linux manages resources much better (Maybe because it doesn't try to stuff ads all over the place and spy on you)

Use the manpages man7.org or sjmilar Use archwiki.org Use bash.org Use your distros site (or use Ubuntu.com or Debian.org for deb/Ubuntu variants like mint)

Learn your package manager. (Apt, pacman, whatever it is). Install apps from there. Unless trusted or you've reviewed the code, avoiding installation from websitez is good practice.

Everything is a text file. Configuration files are usually easily readable and configurable. Though some may be in json and some in Java and some in Matlab and some in sh and some in plaintext (the joys of not having monolithic monopolies controlling everything)

Anyway. Its late. I've rambled. Happy fossing

Consider Nobara for gaming!

For both 2 & 3 the answer is the same:

Having Mint and Windows on the same machine will end up with a completely fucked boot drive if you're not super careful.

When I installed Mint on an NVME I installed specifically for it, either it or windows decided that the boot info should be placed on my SSD with Windows and not on the same NVME as mint (as I wanted, as windows was literally just a dead data drive to me at this point that happened to be bootable), so when it came time for the wipe and swap of drives I suddenly couldn't boot anything

Minor headache to get boot repair rolling and get everything set up properly to the partition I'd made on the NVME, but the googling I did to fix this taught me that Mint and Windows Dual-Boot is a question of "when and what will fuck Up" rather than "if it will"

My advice would be to just read carefully what's happening when you do drive shit and to keep a working boot USB for mint (should do this anyway, but keep it updated) for at least as long as you're dual booting. Boot repair WILL save you, its very easy to use, and remember the words emblazoned on that amazing book: Don't Panic