Gay Ben finally fucked my ass.

Steam dropped support for Windows 8.1 a year or two back. I've still been able to play just fine all this time, only with Steam gobbling up more resources than it usually would. More recently in the past few months, some game demos and early accesses have stopped downloading midway, unable to connect to the servers.

However, today there was an update for Steamworks Common Redistributables that wont connect to the servers either. That means that most of the major games I play wont fucking launch because they need an "Update" that can't be downloaded.

A few things I wanted to ask, if it's alright.
Is EndeavourOS an alright starting OS for Linux beginners? Or should I just go with Mint?
The main games I'm looking to play are,
>War of Rights
>Halo: The Master Chief Collection
>Halo Wars: Definitive Edition
>Death Stranding

Also, I want to keep Windows 8.1 as an optional launch for nostalgia's sake (I had this OS back when my ferrets were alive)
How does that work? Like on startup does it auto-boot into Windows 8.1, then I need to relaunch into Linux? Or what?