So a fortnight ago my home media server (running Emby on Windows 10,) died. While the storage was all spinning rust I had an old sandforce based SSD as a boot srive that did what older sandforce chips sometimes do if disconnected from power and bricked itself.
When I sourced a replacement drive I decided to take the plunge & do something I've been threatening to do for a while and make a Linux based pc having never got further than a live CD before. Especially with all the privacy concerns about windows 10 and the regular pointless changes they keep making to it.
So thanks to the brilliantly detailed instructions on HTPCbeginner within 24 hours I had a functioning media server running Ubuntu 16.04 Server, emby and Samba all administered over SSH. Over the past couple of weeks I've been troubleshooting minor issues (such as the server transcoding to all clients even if they could accept native files passed through,) and now have it running flawlessly.
Its gone so well that my main PC is now running a dual boot into Ubuntu 16.10 so I can learn the Gnome desktop before 17.04 LTS is launched. Although I'm a gamer so I'll always need to dual boot into windows for some games I'm impressed with just how many DO work under Linux.
I still have much to learn but have a few observations:
*the CLI commands seem alien but they're as good if not better than DOS ones we're, it's just getting to know them.
*The BAD news is it doesn't "just work" like a lot of things for in Windows. And if it does need tweaking you will almost certainly need to use the terminal. The GOOD news is that if you choose a popular distro there is a wealth of help, support and documentation online from individuals who have run into similar problems.
*It feels stable and solid.
*The gnome UI didn't seem that alien. This may be as I never used the start menu under windows either. I prefer pressing win-key, typing name of program and pressing enter. That works just as well here.
* Gaming on Linux is a lot better than expected. About 1/3 of my steam library and half of my GOG library work on Linux. YMMV as I lean more to indie titles and don't buy much EA/Activision AAA stuff. Even using a AMD graphics card (which used to be almost unusable under Linux) in a dual monitor setup with the Intel on board driving the second screen works almost fine. I'd only I could stop Pillars of Eternity loading on the 2nd screen and using its resolution.
There are still things I need to learn, and a lot of choices you just don't have to make on Windows like there being more than 1 source of GPU drivers but overall its not as scary as I thought. If anyone is thinking about trying it I'd say that as long as you're willing to learn/Google and you choose a widely used distro you'll probably get the hang of it fairly quickly.