I upgraded both my 2.4GHz i7 laptop, and my 3.4GHz i5 desktop, from 8gb of RAM to 16gb RAM, a couple days ago, because, believe it or not, I was running into low memory warnings occasionally, while only running Firefox with 2 or 3 tabs open, and one MMO game, on Windows10 Home Edition.

It is hard for me to understand how Windows10, Firefox, and one 5 year old game that has "Minimum System Requirements" as follows:

Windows XP Service Pack 2 or better.
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better.
2 GB RAM.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space.
Broadband Internet connection.
Keyboard and mouse

Not a very demanding game by today's standards. The website(s) I generally have displayed while playing the game have no videos running, no ads, no animation other than a clock countdown counter.

The apparent bloat of Windows10 Home Edition (with Cortana turned off, and as many other services I could figure out to turn off without creating other problems), has me thinking about switching to Linux and WINE, to run the few Windows only software applications and games that I use often. Can any of you Linux users here give me advice about what to expect using WINE to run my few Windows only games and CAD software? Which lightweight Linux distro should I check into getting, to run WINE on?

Here are my laptop specs in full:

Intel Core i7 3630QM CPU @2.4GHz (8 cores), 16gb RAM, 64bit Windows10 Home Edition, Crucial CT250MX200SSD3 (200gb 2.5-inch SSD), TS128GSSD370S (128gb mSATA), WDC WD10JPVX-75JC3T0 (1tb hdd), Nvidia GeForce GT 650M discreet video card, Intel HD Graphics 4000, Blu-Ray R/W Optical drive, Intel Centrino Wireless-N2330 & Realtek PCIe FE Family Ethernet Controller.

Obviously, I would only want a Linux distro that fully support all of the hardware included in my laptop. I am less concerned about finding a Linux distro that support my desktop hardware. I am very concerned about how well my Windows only software runs on WINE. Switching to Linux with WINE would be a huge step for me, as I have only toyed with it a couple of times, and don't understand it at all, so I would need to begin basically from square ONE, in learning all about how Linux works. Ideally, I would prefer to install a minimal Linux kernel and drivers, with AmigaOS3.x Workbench (or DOPUS Magellan) as my workspace, like the ALICE laptop does, but I don't want to downgrade to an i3 CPU, and doubt that the ALICE laptop has 16gb of RAM and 2 hdd bays, plus my mSATA slot and a dedicated/discreet graphics card.

Sorry for such a long post, please give me your Linux wisdom and advice.

[ Edited by amigadave 14.09.2017 - 11:33 ]