Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

What stops you from dual-booting?

You use Windows for games, and only games. For everything else, you use Linux.

This is a practical setup.

I go one step further. I have a Windows PC primarily for gaming, on its own physical LAN all to itself, that can only talk to the Internet (not any other LANs). I have an almost-identical PC (sans GPU) for Linux Mint, which I do all of my actually important or meaningful work on.

Like you alluded to, I never use the Windows PC for anything else -- nothing even remotely sensitive -- nothing with identification like logging into government websites, no financial activity, etc. It has no access to my e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, contacts, pictures, videos, and so on. While it has Steam on it, I don't buy Steam games on it; I go to Steam's website on my Linux desktop and buy games there, then they show up in my Steam library on the Windows desktop. I do also use it for 3D CAD since I'm still very much in my infancy learning FreeCAD (which will remove that Windows dependency).

It spends the vast majority of its time turned off and if the entire contents of its drives were published publicly I wouldn't lose a minute's sleep over it. I still image the drive every couple months so I can revert to a known-good config should the need arise, as breaking itself for no reason is what Windows is really good at.

Which makes those god-awful prompts to "Finish setting up Windows Backup" every couple of weeks bloody hilarious...

What about steam chat, discord, etc?

Don't use, don't have.

I am using Discord in Firefox for years without any issues. I also created a container for it after containers became a thing.

I use Discord only for programming groups, study groups, etc. Not for games or in-game chatting.

> This is a practical setup.

What if you need to check emails or take care of some other task mid-game?

I'd argue it isn't a practical setup.

Dual-booting means supporting 2 OSes on my personal machine. My personal machine is for doing personal things, not supporting OSes.

I use windows on my main PC because it supports all the games I want to play, and it also supports all the software I want to use. Linux does not. Simple as that, for me.

I also use Linux and Mac at work daily. I prefer to use the right tool for the job.

I will bite. I have this exact setup. And indeed at the very beginning I would mostly use Linux, then I started playing more games on Windows. And that's when the convenience factor makes windows win. Having to reboot to use linux after a gaming session is annoying when I can just open another app in windows and achieve the same result (and don't forget I would have to reboot yet again when it's time to resume play).

This is what stops me from dual-booting. I don't enjoy Windows as much as the next person, but dual booting inevitably requires me to just duplicate logging into services and installing the same programs in both OSes, and then if I don't boot into one of the OSes for a while, I end up having to wait for updates (admittedly this is a much worse problem on Windows, but it's not not a problem for Linux) and any other things that need to happen just so I can use the computer.

More practical would be to use Windows and then use WSL to host Linux applications.

> check emails

I just do it on my phone if needed.

> some other task mid-game

Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related? Then you are stopping to play anyway.

Or want to order something via Amazon? You can do it on the phone. The app or any browser is sufficient.

> I just do it on my phone if needed.

Do you have your phone by you all the time? Mine is always sitting somewhere, probably charging. On my laptop I just get a notification instantly showing me an email preview without me having to do anything. Having to go check my phone isn't a substitute for that.

> Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related?

Like replying to a message? Going to fetch your phone and type on it is way more painful from than just pressing alt-tab and doing it on the computer.

> Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related?

Do you have nothing long or serious outside of work? I just had to fill out some forms and do some shopping yesterday online for my personal life. That'd have been painful on the phone.

> Then you are stopping to play anyway.

Stopping the app loses your exact state... that's kind of the whole point of pausing the game.

FWIW you have a partial solution here which is to run a VM that boots into the same system that you also dual boot into. It's still inconvenient, but not nearly as bad as having to terminate your app and reboot.