I think you have gotten a lot of good answers so my 2 cents are. Install something simple like Ubuntu and try it out. Getting the answers to your questions will not give you the “feel” of using a linux system. Once you start you will begin to have more answers and a lot more questions, specifically in the areas you are interested in.

Also check the Arch wiki, it is really good for any distro because it gives a good reference for configurations.

I’m curious now, what’s a NZ English word that’s unique to NZ?

And yes, there is no system wide spell check, but I think windows/macos also don’t have this.

The only system I know with system wide spell check are smartphones.

Linux Mint with Mate +1

Linux in general has good language support.

Wrapper and AUR helper.

Is that you?, Crowdstrike?

Bro, install a custom kernel from the AUR and switch all your software to the git versions, just add -git at the end of each package. Do not use pacman, what are you? afraid of life?, use yay like everyone else.

^I ^use ^arch, ^btw.

Gaming: I just Steam for most games, I use Proton GE for better performance in some games

General SW: For things that are light and work with Wine, I will use just that. For SW that needs the Windows “runtime” like the Xbox Accessories SW for my Elite controller, I use a VirtualBox.

Most of my needs are covered by regular Linux apps, such as a Browser, Development environment and Media.

There are open LLMs models, you can have your own very biased assistant.