Linux

Ok, so I'm assuming you have never installed Windows before. It's not that complicated (especially nowadays that Windows finally learned how to automatically search for drivers, that used to be the most annoying part). First of all make a note of your current Windows CD Key, you will need it to reinstall and not every computer can retrieve it if you uninstall windows.

After that, you need a windows USB drive, just like the Linux one you'll use to install Linux. You can get it from Microsoft website, but again I advise you to get it while on Windows (Microsoft hides the way to download the iso on Linux).

Finally I strongly recommend you DON'T uninstall windows, instead keep it and install Linus side by side. This is called dual booting, every time you turn on your computer it will ask you where to boot.

Easy in terms of installing windows? No harder than a normal install in any situation. Easy in terms of usability? Can't even imagine ever trying. Have a hard enough time using my windows cloud r at work.

If you have a flash drive and an external disk you can boot into Rescuezilla (a disk cloning/backup/restore distribution) using the flash drive, save/backup your OS disk as an image in the external disk, and restore it as needed. After restoration, you will have your OS disk as it was at the time you saved it.

Υou can download the Windows iso, burn it in a usb stick before you nuke it to install linux, and find free legal serial numbers online (there are various serials for all versions of win10/11, all legal -- it's considered semi-activated with these).

recently I have encountered a problem with this, it is indeed not so straightforward to create a bootable windows 10 USB instillation media under linux.

The media created by fedora media writer is not bootable and the media created by ventoy lacks drivers. I was then able to create a media quite easily with the last windows machine in my household. I don't know if it is a temporary bug or fundamental incompatibility.

So I would suggest you to keep a windows installation media at hand in case you need to switch back, or make sure at least one of your friend has a windows machine you can borrow.

Technically it's easy. You just leave your Windows install where it is (assuming you have enough disk space) and it'll be waiting there ready to embrace you again when you decide to give up on freedom and come crawling back. Psychologically it could be a challenge.

I know it's not what you're asking but switching back is truly horrible, I have to use w11 at work and I hate every second of it. One drive shoven down your throat, Xbox stuff wants to install something everytime I update, installing stuff from random exes found on websites (I know the store exists but it sucks if your needs are not "I want to install candy crush"), changed something in your path variable? Reboot! Wtf? I really hope microsoft abandons windows in favour of its cloud apps for people who need it and lets Linux distros rule the desktop world

You can keep windows and install Linux next to it.

The best way would be to add a new ssd or m.2 card to your pc and install Linux on that. Make that the main boot device and Linux normally will detect Windows and give you a boot menu where you can chose between Linux and Windows each time you boot.

Alternatively you can resize the windows partition and install Linux onto free space on your main drive. This is more fiddly and things can go wrong with this if you don't know what you're doing.

You can also boot Linux on an external USB drive but this will be slower and may guge you a false impression of Linux. You can also try Linux in a virtual machine like Virtualbox but again this will be slower and will give you a false impression of Linux as a daily driver OS.

I personally run a dual boot system - I have two m.2 nvme drives, one with windows and one with Linux. I barely use the windows partition now but I keep it around for rare work stuff or the rare occasion I have a game I can't get to run in Linux. And I mean rare - booted Windows maybe 3 times in last 6 months.

Get a second SSD, install there

The easiest way to preserve an existing Windows installation is to take out the drive it's on and put in a new drive for Linux. That way if you want to go back, you can just swap in the old drive again. Installing M.2 or SATA drives is very easy and 100% doable even if you're not an expert.

I dual boot my windows and linux so I can switch between them whatever I want. Depending how you install linux, you can open or check window files on linux. But windows can't check linux files. I kept my windows because adobe products doesn't support linux.