I did. If you're a developer, for a personal machine it's both easy and straightforward (I have work provided machines that use other OS's but that's outside the scope of this post). Do a little research on HW that works well with Linux (I went all AMD). Purchase, wipe, install distro of your choice (I went with Manjaro, because of Arch, doesn't really matter). It's been about 2 years and I haven't had a single serious issue (serious as defined here is, can't boot or non-functional HW). I'm running most of the latest stuff, Sway on Wayland, pipewire, etc...

Not a good alternative for the big middle distribution of computer skills of the computer user base. Web browser only? Great. Highly skilled? Great. Everyone else? It can be a nightmare. Linus' Linux Challenge videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M) provide excellent insight into the typical user experience for anyone beyond web browser only requirements and beneath administrator level. If you find yourself saying "what an idiot, how did he not know that "do as I say" would mangle his OS," you're definitively in the highly skilled camp.

Linux UX convention relies on the terminal as a matter of course. Almost everything not in the package manager requires use of the terminal. Even many of the package managed applications require tweaks and configuration via terminal. It's an open secret that package managers are largely inferior to the terminal anyway, in every distribution. The almost universal response to "I am having an issue with the package manager" is "use terminal." Bottom line: terminal is far less user friendly than an object oriented environment, and is often much slower. Until a flavour of Linux exists which never ever, for any reason ever, requires the use of the terminal, Linux will remain in the low single digits in terms of consumer market share. I don't think this will change, because if you ask the average Linux developer what they think of the terminal convention, they love it, and they think users just need to stop sucking so much.

This doesn't actually solve the problem, though. What's going on is that more systems are becoming reliant on "secure computing" to work properly, so (e.g.) Netflix won't stream full quality to your Linux PC.

On its own that may not seem like much, but the screws are being turned (albeit slowly). We'll reach a point where the only way to access any proprietary content on the web will also require running proprietary operating systems on DRM enabled hardware using secure boot. Banking sites won't work, video playback won't work, even access to textual content will eventually be restricted. This is because the browser vendors, the OS vendors, and the content distribution platforms are all colluding to create this future.

Linux on the desktop doesn't have enough users to push back in a meaningful way against this trend at this point (and I say that as a Linux user). 10 years ago, maybe, but now it's simply too late. Sure you'll still be able to run open source software on your Linux PC, and write your own code and run it, but you'll be prevented from accessing huge chunks of the Internet.

Dual boot on your current PC, no time like the present.

Bonus: you add years to the useful life of the machine, because most Linuxes fly even when Windows chugs.

You can just put linux on a USB and boot it from the USB on each startup.

Makes it easy to try before you commit to dual booting.