Perhaps, I will try a Linux operating system.

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I've thought about looking into it before, but haven't really bothered...but from what I understand it might be a better experience than windows 10 basically I am not seeing many good reasons not to look into it. I guess my concern is what I would do if I end up not liking it, I would certainly want to try it out first without replacing the windows 10...as not sure how easy it would be to re-install windows 10 if I removed it and wanted it back. Obviously I'll need to do some more in depth research before I do anything to my computer but I am seriously considering it. I have certainly never really switched operating systems, and am certainly very much used to windows. But I understand linux has some more user friendly versions currently, whereas in the past I have worried it would be too complicated which is another reason I didn't really consider it before.

Well I found one that looks good, called Deepin however seems like actually installing it would be a little complicated, so trying to find good instructions on how to do it without screwing anything up. Was hoping I could just click install and it does everything, but seems like I have to somehow put the file on a USB drive, and then not sure how I would keep from deleting windows 10. Not sure it gives a specific option to add it in addition to the windows, or if it would just automatically delete and replace it.

I don't suppose anyone here knows about installing operating systems. Also, not sure that would be the best one just seems like it would be simple enough to use and also visually appealing.

I think you should try some more popular distro, like linux Mint or some flavour of Ubuntu, you will find help with installing it more easily. Everything depends on what hardware you have, if you have SecureBoot or not, if you have a backup partition for reinstalling Windows etc. Definitely look is not a good criterium for choosing particular linux, because you can change it to almost anything later. You should look for help on the distro forums, if you have troubles with that I can help you (well, at least I can try ). If you don't want to write your computer specs in the open you can PM me.

Get Unetbootin or Rufus and download a "live image" of a Linux operating system. You can use a pen drive or cd as a source for your OS, just plug it in when your computer is off, and choose to beeot to the pen drive or cd on boot by pressing the boot select key (different on each machine, but usually F8, F10, or F12).

Alternatively, download VirtualBox and run a Linux system inside Windows. I've done it. I've even co sidered running Windows inside Linux.

Deepin has security concerns ATM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v25Dy66AtNI

Before transitioning to Linux the first thing you should do is find
applications that are cross compatible and use them in Windows for a month.
Obviously you're ok with web browsers and you have Thunderbird for an email client,
but if you use Photoshop try out GIMP. If you use MS Office try WPS Office.
VLC will handle video files, but try Quod Libet for your music library,
If you use ebooks you are probably already using Calibre.

When you are ready to try out a distro I would recommend one using KDE as
this is very similar to Windows 7.
At this point I would like to recommend to you the distro that I've been using
for many years and that is PCLinuxOS.
This distro has great hardware support, current software in it's software repositories,
It's a rolling release, so it is constantly being updated and it's rock solid.

When you install your distro, I would recommend doing a full
install to a USB drive or stick and set the BIOS to boot the usb drive first.
This way you can make sure all your hardware is compatible with your new distro
without touching your Windows installation. Just pull the usb out when you have
finished your evaluation.

When you finally install to the hard drive, make sure that you create both a root and a home partition.
This way when you install programs, all of your settings will be stored in the home folder.
If something should go wrong and you need to re-install the OS, the installer will
write the OS back to the root and leave the home folder alone. When you boot
back into the OS, all your settings, documents, emails etc will be present and you
won't have to touch that backup that you so diligently made.

Also if you're a gamer you should look into gaming support on Linux as It's not great.

Also, I want to add that if you like or are used to the appearance of Windows, you can download appearance packs for most distros. I pretty much cloned my W10 desktop environment look and feel with Lubuntu.

I found the transition to Ubuntu worked well for me, and the installer made it very easy to set up the option of still using Windows whenever I need to (I have some programs I use that don't have a Linux equivalent). Updates are very easy on Ubuntu - it has a nice little updater program that tells you when there's anything new available, and it lets you do the actual updating whenever you find it convenient. I don't remember having to use the command line at all since I installed it about a year ago.

If you want the option of using both Linux and Windows it will help if your hard drive is partitioned so that your data (music, videos, documents etc.) are kept in a separate partition or on external hard drives, so that you don't have to duplicate everything. (Partitions just split your hard drive so that it looks as if you have more than one.) If you decide to do that, you may have to tweak Windows a little bit though, as it has a nasty habit of making data partitions inaccessible from Linux - that's something I could take you through if you think that the Windows/Linux combination is the best way to go.

I know you can install Ubuntu alongside Windows, but it runs faster when installed on a partition that uses their specific file system. Running it from a USB or CD is pretty slow too, but gives you an easy way to check things out before committing.

I really should setup a Linux build for recording music, but last time I checked it out, trying to install obscure hardware drivers was super, super complicated, so that really scared me off.

If you want to study some code while you're at it, you could look at what I run.
https://fedoramagazine.org/whats-new-fedora-28-workstation/
https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/
It's possible to run all the Ubuntu stuff in 'Enterprise Linux' type distributions too & my Linux laptop is working great even with a touchscreen on Fedora. I use Linux regularly & just run virtual Windows at this point, although I may put some of my work in a Windows workstation depending on the price I can get for the right one.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

As a person who once had a dual-boot Window/Ubuntu setup (with each OS installed on a separate hard drive) I can honestly tell you that you probably won't find anything in Linux that is better than what you can get with Windows 10.

If you want to experience Linux, the simplest way is to set up a virtual machine using VMWare Player or VirtualBox then installing a Linux distro to that. Still not that easy for a non-techie but very little long term impact on your computer. However, make sure you have enough physical memory allocated for the virtual machine or it will run like a dog (no offense meant to dogs).

Linux would be a attractive option if you happened to have a working computer but no OS. But you already have Windows 10.

I'd recommend dedicating an old machine to trying out a few distributions without bothering to preserve a windows partition. Partitioning is a totally different skill from just playing with operating systems. I use one of these (Lenovo Thinkpad X220) as a backup for my new one and they're down to 1-200 dollars for a decently quick little machine that's very Linux friendly.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos