“I’ll just have to bow down to Windows 10, sigh.”
You may want to look into Linux Mint 18.3 as a dual boot option or as a removable bootable drive.
And if you can get Windows 8.1 with the classic shell do that.
Someone did suggest Ubuntu. A few years ago (?) I tried Linux and since I am one techtard I couldn’t figure it out at all; have heard it’s easier now. But for me stuff has to be gradeschool easy.
Not sure what Windows 8.1 with classic shell is; I thought everything new comes with (choke gag) Windows 10 now.