Guidance Please

Can someone point me to a great site/video on how to jump into this? Seems like Mint, Cashy, or Pika might be my starting points based off some things I’ve read. I want to get this started on a spare laptop that’s pretty powerful to get it all down before converting my main PC. I’m an MCSE that almost studied Linux in the late 90s but decided against it. Want to jump in now that I’m retired from IT.

Do these open exe files now? Is wine basically installed into the OS or is that still a separate install?

I want to do this on my gaming PC. Seems like this has almost caught up and works great with the idea it will be 100% very soon. Correct? I’m okay with hiccups from time to time but I’m not trying to make a new career out of making my games work.

Or am I just stuck with what’s available on Steam for Linux? Which I bet is a lot now with Steam OS. But if I want to run non Steam games am I SOL?

Thank you. Excited to jump in and learn.