before windows 10 driver support was painful and tedious. it hase very good usb driver support and fast video support.
windows 8 can be updated to windows 10 for free if you have neither a copy from ebay will run you 10 or 15 dollars for home or professional
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-windows-xp-for-free-and-legally-straight-from-microsoft-si/
https://www.reactos.org/ really nice free version of windows works good for virtualmachines has video hardware acceleration/drivers support so it can play windows games still iirc.
Applications
- https://portableapps.com portable apps is very handy application for getting ahold of games and apps
- gimp image editing
- blender
- libreoffice
- codeblocks
- qtCreator
- vlc
- steam is very nice addon for windows
- hexchat
- firefox
- thunderbird
- handbrake
Software to buy
- Ableton Live
- Fruity Loops
- anysoft dvd
- powerdvd – great software for copying DVD’s fit on cd-r’s with menu’s
RaspberryPi-Windows
http://virtualdiskimages.weebly.com/