The similarity is really only superficial. You would have to learn about the OS one way or the other, even if some distro has Interfaces similar to Windows. You might need to find software alternatives for example, or be comfortable with package manager.
For gaming, you want to checkout Steam w/ Proton and Heroic Game Launcher
I am more comfortable using Ansible and Terraform, so I find VMs more suited for me. Though for random nodejs or PHP apps, I do put them in postman containers and pods.