TL:DR Went back to Windows, crawled back to Linux begging it for forgiveness.
So for context. This year, I made my transition on my main rig from Windows 10 to Linux. At the time I had a Ryzen 5 1600 with a Gigabyte motherboard. I got a new boot SSD for it, and the transition was smooth.
From time to time I swapped between Windows and Linux for some use cases, finishing projects started in Windows only software, and the like. But by the spring I switched over to Linux full time.
Now how I swapped wasn't dual booting with GRUB, but instead booting off of the two different SSD's. Where Linux boot drive can see my Windows 10 boot drive. And Windows can't see my Linux one. Can't corrupt anything if you can't access it.
By the end of my transition I had saved up enough money and I was able to upgrade my hardware. I moved to an Intel i3 12100F for it's single core performance (huzzah FreeCAD and it's single core dependence).
Now at some point during this process I lost access to boot from my Windows 10 boot drive. It eventually turned out to be a Motherboard configuration. But at the time I didn't know and honestly didn't care. Linux Mint + Windows 10 VM (for iOS backups) handled everything I needed to do with my machine and more. And so I kept using it... until today.
Today I updated my Motherboard, x-mas sales means potential deals on 13th and 14th gen Intel. And a Motherboard BIOS update to stop it from frying a potential new chip was a good idea in my head.
That was until the flash was done, and my machine wouldn't boot. Turned out to be Secure Boot re-enabling itself, which I disabled. But while I was messing around I accidentally fixed my Windows 10 boot fixed. So I booted it to see if it worked.
When I turned it on... it was fine and worked well. But then an MSI Utility popped up for no reason (didn't even prompt it thanks windows update). Then I decided to clean shop, and started uninstalling stuff that wasn't necessary for my Windows boot drive. Since there's no point in having steam if Linux works. And I can save space.
As I am doing this I noticed that my copy of Windows 10 de-activated itself since my hardware changed. No problem I said, let me get my old Key and try again... nope. Didn't work.
I tried the troubleshooter utility... again no, and required a microsoft account to use.
Ugh, fine. Sign in with and it takes over my PC... and still won't activate my Windows.
At this point I say screw it. Returned my account to a local one, and stopped since my Windows 10 machine doesn't need activation. It just needs to play games. But even then the Xbox app won't let me log in since it was "offline" despite connecting and downloading from the internet.
I was off of Windows for 7 months (according to the newest installed app), and I wanted to go back to Linux. It's not that Windows is a bad OS, but that it's so bloated with tamper protection and account authentications that it makes using it a chore.
An OS is suppose to just be a tool. The bridge between the Hardware and Software so that the user can focus and do what they want to do on their machine. And Linux (for those who understand computers) is beyond good enough to replace Windows. It just sucks that many pieces of software is locked down to the platform. SteamOS can't come out soon enough to force these companies to move away from Microsoft.
For me I'll testing to see if there is any real benefits of using Windows on my machine (games only). If there isn't I'll probably wipe the drive and use it as my game cache.
A cross platform option would be Power ISO. It has an option for the bin/cue format CD games are in and I’ve used it on Linux. It can also do ISO for DVD games