I was looking into linux myself but felt I would have been in over my head, you would want to do a crash course to gain an understanding but much more privacy based.

I currently use Apache Open Office Instead of Windows, it has pretty much the same layout and User Interface.

There are some great freeware sites online I use https://www.freewarefiles.com quite alot for editing and production software, but some of it is only free for 30 days, I flagged them they shouldnt even be on a freeware site.

Basically anything from nch software is not freeware but very good software at a fraction of the cost