Most of the “software that runs only on Windows” runs perfectly on Linux with wine, including the installation software, and the integration into the app launcher on all of the Linux distribution that I know.
For a widow manager, I don’t use one, i have many virtual desktop and as it’s smoother than in Windows, I use only that (i don’t remember how virtual desktop works on ubuntu)
Première run really badly in VM, and run it with wine is highly messy, do to poorly designed Windows install soft and plenty of missing dependencies, there are linux alternatives that do nearly the same job : KDEnLive, Shotcut and Openshot.
That all I can tell for now, I hope it will help you a bit. Ps: try other linux distribution before doing an installation to find the desktop manager that you prefer.
Hi, To try a Linux, you’ll need a usb stick drive, at least 2go, then find a distro to try, for that, my advice is to check the ranked list on https://distrowatch.com/
Most of them have different “flavor” (aka desktop manager), gnome, xfce, cinnamon… They are consistent from a distro to another so think about it as distinct feature.
To start the ISO, you can use Ventoy, on which you copy the iso files of several distro at once. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
You may need to chance the order of booting of your laptop to start from the usb stick, depending of the age of the bios/Uefi, it’s just a key press during the boot or on windows keep Shift pressed while clicking on the reboot start menu button.
When you get to the started distro you wanna try, you may check if all the hardware is operational (except for nvidia closed driver which need a full install) you can install software to find the tools you need, browse web to find answers to the new questions you’ll have, everything you do there is volatile and disappear with restart, so it’s a cool playground use it to learn as much as you can.
And after trying, breaking, and finding the coolest distro for you, you can install on your internal drive.
I play a lot on Linux, ark, genshin, civilisation, palworld… As easy as, install steam, go to settings, compatibility, check the square, and install your games, enjoy!