content: Dual boot Linux Mint off an 8GB thumb drive and try it out. Don't forget to backup windows, media, documents etc. just in case. Change your boot order, so you don't go straight to windows. After dual booting, read the Mint intro manual, check out the troubleshooting / user forum, learn a bit about the OS to see if it is the right thing for your needs. Then feel free to install Mint, move your files over and delete your windows partition, if you want to. If you feel like you need windows to run certain games and software, you can use wine or if you are feeling fancy, you can do a PCI passthrough with virtualbox.