I'll be more than happy for more people to migrate to linux (or mac, but many people just can't afford it) so MS doesn't have such a monopoly on the OS space.
That's something I want to do, but I'm afraid of missing something while backing up up my files and losing it in the OS wipe. It's a lousy excuse, I know, but it still stops me. Mostly since I play a lot of games and don't want to lose any save files tucked away somewhere unexpected.
That stuff should all be in C:/Users, but what if its not. And would have to go to each of my installed pieces of software to make sure any of my files are properly backed up which is so much work. Which only reveals another issue that I am terrible at keeping my stuff backed up.
Just dual boot at first, you don't have to wipe the windows partition. That way if/when you find a save file you need to copy over, you can go looking for it on your still existing Windows drive