If you don’t mind paying to use a search engine, Kagi is actually pretty good. Not as good as Google was 20 years ago, but significantly better than any other search engine I can find today.
You can always try Linux risk free in a virtual machine like VirtualBox.
If you like what you see, and you have any valuable data backed-up, you can try dual booting. That way you get to use Linux as your primary operating system, but can switch back and forth as much as needed.
I found I was dual booting Windows and Linux for over 3 years before I was comfortable enough to stop using Windows entirely. Switching to Linux doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. You can take it as slow as you want.
Most engines are less than 30% efficient at producing movement. The majority of the energy is lost as heat.
Thermodynamics tells us that pretty much all energy ends up as heat. In a closed system, any device that uses energy is 100% efficient at making heat. A 1000W computer will make exactly as much heat as a 1000W heater.
A 100% efficient engine can only exist if the desired output is heat, thus making it a pretty useless engine. Also, in a closed system, the exhaust cannot leave.
I highly recommend Linux Mint (cinnamon) as an entry level Linux distro. It looks and feels similar to Windows, and it’s based on Ubuntu, so it has a lot of support and compatibility.