GoumLeChat

Well that's my main issue, my rig runs an i5-6900 and I have 16GB RAM. I gave 6 to the Linux VM, and try to maintain the usage on Windows as low as possible : not having the browser running on both, a plug-in to put to sleep tabs not used, stopping processes I'm not using. KDE is a bit too much in my case, but Cinnamon, or XFCE are working fine. I've found a new love with i3wm but it needs some time to tinker it to your taste.

But if you have a more recent computer, you should be fine. Upgrade the RAM maybe, if you find it to slow.

I tried dual booting, and I found it to be annoying as well. I always had to reboot because something I needed was on the other OS. Over a few weeks Linux was just taking space on the drive.

More recently what I've been doing was to run Linux in a VM that starts automatically on full screen when opening my Windows session (easy to set up). So now I can work with both in parallel, transfer data, synchronise clipboard with Ditto, have my Windows-specific software while still using Linux as my daily OS. Even better now since I have a NAS which I didn't have during the dual boot period, so I can mount drives for both. For that you can either use VMWare Workstation Player or Oracle VirtualBox, they're both free.

When it comes to swap, of course you will be able to run Windows in a VM on Linux. But transfering your current data ? I'm not sure at all. It might be doable, but I think you should save your data externally for both machines and do a proper reinstall. It will save you some time and hassle.

Use Sonarr or Radarr, it will download content for you as soon as it is available on the tracker. Since people are mostly looking for new stuff it works really well to boost your ratio. I have at least a ratio of 10 (first episode is closer to 20) for every Ahsoka and Futurama episodes. For Asteroid City I'm currently at 18.

I love to browser users files, not so much to see what they have I could be interested in, but mostly to check out how they manage their music folders. Every person does it differently.

For downloading music Soulseek is my main source. I might grab a torrent here and there for a specific release or when it's just a mess to get with Soulseek (like the Final Fantasy OSTs).

For managing the library and listening to it, Foobar2000 all the way. It can get a while to set it up properly but it will be tailored to your liking. It's the most advanced player out there. And there are plenty of add-ons (called components) to add features and basically do anything you could need : play MIDI or old consoles music files, play music from Youtube, get tags from Discogs or MusicBrainz, get lyrics, UPnP server... The interface is highly customizable as well. And you can create shortcuts for almost anything, components included (although shortcuts would need a revamp).

Oh and I didn't told you about queries. That makes tag fields as variables. So now you could make a query on a genre, a codec, an artist... "%codec% IS FLAC" will output only FLAC files. Very, very handy to manage your library. These variables can also be used to rename or move files. You can also use queries to create autoplaylists. These playlists are auto-updated based on the query, you don't have to maintain them. I have made a bunch for 60s to 2020s music, my favorite artists, or mixed compilations.

A few components to install right away : Playback Statistics and Enhanced Playback Statistics, they will no only give you better play stats (duh) but also new query fields. Masstagger to make batch modification on tags, this will save you a lot of time. Also for now install the 32bits version, many components are not available on the 64bits yet.

So yeah Foobar2000 takes a bit of time, but it's great, highly customizable. It has saved me dozens if not hundreds of hours to manage my library. And it's free. It's my favorite piece or software and I could talk about it all day long.