I’m still skeptical on how much it can help me in the long run
It won't. The only reason people have a hard-on for switching from Windows to Linux is because Windows 11 is a mess, it's current direction is a mess and people want off of it, but the only direct alternative is Linux. That's basically your only concern about
having to switch to Linux. Do you actually
want to make the switch? Or are you pressured by the current state of Windows?
If it's the latter, Linux is not some magical OS that's superior in every way to everything else. If you believe that, you've bought into what the Linux cultists spew. People who give zero shits about your end user experience, what you do with your computer and what you want to do on your computer. They only care about whether or not you use Linux. If you don't, you have to use it now and they'll go above and beyond to convince you to make the switch, but the more your Windows use cases are incompatible with Linux, the more they'll start to try and convince you to go through fifteen steps to do something that just works under Windows and make it seem like a good thing. They will also do a rudimentary search on AlternativeTo to find something that kinda sorta fits the description of what it is that you're using on Windows but can't on Linux and try to push it as "the same if not better" even though if you used it for five minutes you'd be able to tell it's not even a candidate for an alternative. They don't use what you use, they don't know what it is that you want, but will confidently say that you can totally make the switch and you won't notice it even if that's not the case.
A normal person would just tell you that you'd be better off with Windows since what you want to do would be more hassle on Linux than it's worth. A cultist, AKA a mentally ill person that treats their OS as a religion and not as a tool will never admit to any faults or shortcomings of Linux. If you spot a cultist, ignore their "advice" and try to look for someone that's actually objective about Linux, someone that had on-hands experience with it and isn't afraid to call it shit when it clearly is shit.
So, depending on what it is that you're doing on Windows:
The absolute basics: web browsing, saving files, playing local media, doing basic office work. Linux Mint will be a better experience than Windows and you won't have to touch the command line, it's
the distro for most.
Vidya: for the most part it's now a "just works" situation thanks to Valve making a ton of effort for the sake of being able to sell their own products without being reliant on Microsoft.
-If you only play Steam games, perfect, plug and play.
-Multiplayer with anticheat: forget it, Windows only.
-Older games you install raw: you'll either have a premade community package to make it seamless or you'll have to tinker to get it running.
Media creation uses: this is where you'll have to make sacrifices.
-Adobe suite doesn't work on Linux but it's the golden standard. You'll have to find alternatives, but frankly, you should even if you're under Windows and you pirate that shit, just so that you don't get locked into their ecosystem.
-There is a solid free alternative for Premiere and After Effects, which is DaVinci Resolve. Runs on Windows, Linux and macOS.
-Photoshop has no good alternative, it's either PhotoPea that's online only, or Affinity Photo that's Windows only but with the ability to tinker around and run under Linux.
-Out of the FOSS stuff, Krita is decent if you're a digital artist.
-Forget about using GIMP for anything that's not "image manipulation" as the name says, it's a technical program, not a creative one. Anyone suggesting it as a serious alternative to Photoshop is an aforementioned cultist.
-Vector graphics and CAD software: Inkscape and FreeCAD are both enthusiast toys like GIMP and not serious work software. Though if you were doing light vector/CAD work on Windows you probably already used these two. But if you do it professionally then you're stuck on Windows.
-3D graphics: Blender got a metric fuckton of funding from absolutely every major company so it's the most mature piece of FOSS around and there's no point in being a slave to Autodesk's antiquated garbage.
Very purpose specific software that doesn't even have Windows alternatives: it's a 50/50. Maybe it's a file manager that you're really fond of but all the Linux alternatives are half-assed imitations of it and not real alternatives, or maybe it's some program from the 90's or 2000's for doing something very specific. Might run under Wine just fine or it might be so specific that it won't work at all.
Needless to say, it's not a 1:1 alternative, never was and never will be, no matter how much the cultists will try to convince you that it is. The more specific your needs get, the more you'll have to mess with the command line, the more you'll have to understand how the guts of Linux work, and the more you'll have to bumblefuck around to get shit working.
Though if your needs aren't that in-depth then Mint should suffice. It's very handholdy, just works, install and use distro. Which is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. You want to spend more time using your computer than setting it up, it's the main drive behind people wanting to switch to Linux because Windows is so shit nowadays you need to do voodoo magic to make it usable. If anyone scoffs at you for using a user friendly distro like Mint, feel free to tell them to eat shit since that's the only good response.
Don't listen to people suggesting Arch and Gentoo, those are for Dunning-Kruger douchebags with no personality where they think wasting time on fucking around with a command line to do what Mint does OOTB makes them cool, which is a good chunk of the Linux community unfortunately. They are not beginner friendly distros and are targeting enthusiasts that like to do more in-depth Linux tinkering, something that practically no one who is looking to move from Windows to Linux is interested in. They're interested in Windows but Linux, where Mint is the best choice.
If someone recommends Manjaro, don't buy into it. Manjaro is based on Arch, and Arch isn't meant to be a beginner friendly distro, so by it's nature Manjaro has too many issues for it to be a beginner friendly distro.
Mint is way more bulletproof as it's based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian. This lineage is more tried and true. Ubuntu itself is dogshit, but Mint removes everything bad about it and makes it better.
Don't install raw Debian either, it has a nice GUI installer and it's easy to get it going, but it has badly outdated packages by design and you will be more reliant on the command line as it does less for you OOTB.
MX Linux is another one of those recommendations that I also would advise avoiding as it's one of those distros that doesn't use systemd. systemd is a very controversial project in the Linux community that serves as a core component of the OS, but everything uses systemd, so it's best to use systemd so that you won't run into an issue that throws you into a loop because something wanted systemd, you didn't have it so your first experience with Linux was something not working because of Linux. Avoid that hassle on your first contact, go with Mint.
Very important: just because a distro is beginner friendly doesn't mean it takes control away from you. What it means is that it comes preinstalled and preconfigured in such a way that you, as the average user, won't have to touch the command line to do 99.9% of what it is that you want to do. But make no mistake, you can still fuck around in Mint as you can in any other distro. There are also those atomic distros like Bazzite that don't let you fuck around with the core OS but Mint is not one of them. Mint is more traditional and it's a good starting step.
tl;dr: just install Mint in a VM, ideally Hyper-V so that it runs smoothly. Not Ubuntu, not Debian, not MX Linux, not LMDE, not Manjaro. Plain old Linux Mint with Cinnamon, that's what you want for your first experience. Don't listen to any other suggestions if you've never had any Linux experience and you're only looking to escape Windows. Fuck around in it. See what stuff you do on Windows you can do on Mint, and if you can't, see if there's a way to do it easily. If you massively fuck it up, no biggie, it's a VM so it's like clearing a mine instead of stepping on it, learn from your mistakes, reinstall and keep learning.
Art and audio, possibly video editing too
Though now that you've specified it, then to wrap back to what I was saying: it is possible, but you will have to retrain yourself to use a different software suite. The good news is that all the alternatives worth a shit you can run under Windows, so you can first readjust to the new workflow, and then decide to make the full switch to Linux once you decide that yes, you can make the switch and it can be painless for you.
It's basically what James Lee went through and talked about in this video.
You will have to change your habits and break up with Adobe. That'll be your first step to breaking up with Windows.
