I am worried about being confused by “new” software I am not familiar with.

Before I even begin, I will say some new users are under the impression that they will have to re-learn basic tasks, such as copying, pasting, saving a file, just to name a few … that is NOT THE CASE. These tasks (while you may be doing them in a different program than what your use to), are the same in Windows and Linux.

First I want to say that other than an unfamiliar name for a program, the functioning of many programs (say play, stop, “next track” ..etc in video or audio players) are no different from Microsoft Windows programs for the same task… its just the name of the program you'd use that changes

Many of the (opinion here) best Windows program for a particular task, are cross platform, so that means you can find “familiar faces” in Linux that you have used in Windows for years.

• Libre Office
• VLC for media converting/playback
• Audacity for audio file editing
• SMPlayer – another media player
• Firefox, Chromium, Brave, Google Chrome or Vivaldi for Web Browsing
• Avidemux – video player editor
• GIMP – FREE alternative to Photoshop

These programs, listed above, are just a few programs that work perfectly (and in some cases originated in Linux, then got tranformed to work in Windows later.

Program like DEVEDE (video ~> DVD program), I never got working on Windows EVER. In Linux, its my “go to” program for the task (Creating DVDs playable in DVD Players from various video files)