I barely dumped windoze myself just a few years ago. I had a ton of money invested in programs that only run on win too, so leaving win is not easy for most people. Luckily though, I discovered Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition). It was an easy migration away from win and it has tons of free software (like LibreOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, VLC Media Player, IPFS desktop, etc). Mint also has a very familiar interface which is easy to transition to away from win. There are a ton of different flavors of linux and desktop environments to choose from too, so anyone looking to finally dump microsoft win should seriously consider it.

Just backup your necessary data to usb stick (bookmarks, contacts, notes, downloads, etc), then fdisk, format, and install linux on the nice fresh hard drive.

Here is a good start imo:
https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

One thing I love about linux mint is that is has never crashed, not even once. No more BSOD's! Once I dumped win and installed mint, the first thing I noticed was how FAST it runs. My computer literally was running faster than it was when it was brand new. Oh yeah, and it's FREE. :)