Minty95

Like you i switched from about 30 years of windows to Linux almost three years ago, Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro, Endeavour before ending up with Arch which I find perfect. I also have two PCs running Debian for HomeAssitant setups in two homes but I don’t like Debian I sometimes use my wife’s Windows setup for Garmin Express as that’s the only windows program that I need. So keep on going, Windows is not missed,

For note taking, Joplin is pretty good, in fact I went from Simplenote to Evernote (over kill and not free) to Joplin using Dropbox for the syncing (syncing is done by Joplin, so you don’t need a ‘syncing’ app) between my PCs, all Linux and my Android phone. Simple to set up and free. I do not use it as a Journal as that is extremely poor, but for notes, it’s perfect

I went from Manjaro to Arch. Installed by command line (took a few tries to get it done… ) I tried their installer but it wasn’t very good. Have also run Endeavour on a second pc for a while but I prefer pure Arch.

I keep a diary using Diaro on my android phone. I started a long time ago in note books, but as even I can’t alway read my own writing, switched to typing. I don’t write much, mostly rubbish, what I do find useful is the ability to search and find things, ‘repaired the fridge’ ‘changed the battery in the smoke alarm’, ‘had so and so around for dinner’ , ‘bought this and that’ … It’s only for myself, do when I’m dead and gone it will just disappear like myself

I use timeshift, on Arch and a Debian setup . It’s simple to set up, I do a automatic snapshot once a day, so if something breaks, just boot into tty and restore the previous day’s snapshot, takes about five minutes. Not sure why you say ext4 doesn’t work as it does. Haven’t tried the other programs that you talked about

Timeshift for the system, works perfectly, if you screw up the system, bad update for instance just start it, and you’ll be back up running in less than ten minutes. Simple Cron backups for data, documents etc, just in case you delete a folder, document, image etc . Both of these options to a second internal HD

I’ve used Joplin for years now before was Evernote. I like it because it’s open source and the syncing option is built in, exemple either to Dropbox or NextCloud (I use both these options, DB only because I have a free option of 12gB otherwise I would use just NC) The syncing is painless as as I said built-in. It’s not a pretty app, fairly plain, but it works perfectly, on my android and Linix PCs, Arch and Debian. I did try Obsidian once. It’s pretty, but not being open source put me of. Try it again, takes minutes to set up, as again open source and works well

Diaro sends me a notification and the end of the Day, reminding me to write something.

It sounds like the best option would be a dual boot, Linux for everything except games and when you want to play just boot into Windows. If you do this i would strongly suggest a two HD set up, one for windows and one for Linux, for two reasons, if you don’t like Linux then you still have the original windows setup, two Windows will at one moment wipe the dual boot grub and you’ll ‘lose’ the Linux startup, unless you have one OS per Hard Disk. I don’t game anymore. Like you I also have an old card Gtx760 🤣🤣

The Arch install is much lighter, Endeavour like many other linuxes, installs programs that you may or may not require. I prefer adding programd when I require them