I am thinking of switching to Ubuntu, but I am concerned about some things:
Ubuntu is capable of reading and writing files stored on Windows formatted partitions. These partitions are normally formatted with NTFS, but are sometimes formatted with FAT32. You will also see FAT16 on other devices.
General Considerations
Ubuntu will show files and folders in NTFS/FAT32 filesystems which are hidden in Windows. Consequently, important hidden system files in the Windows C:\ partition will show up if this is mounted. Since it is all-too-easy to accidentally modify or delete files which are essential for Windows, it is advisable to mount your Windows C:\ partition as seldom as possible, preferably not at all, or read-only by configuring /etc/fstab (see below). If you have data which you want to access regularly from both Windows and Ubuntu, it is better to create a separate data partition for this, formatted NTFS.
Whether you write to your Windows C:\ partition or a shared NTFS data partition, be aware that if you are using Windows 7, and Windows 7 is in a hibernated state when you write to the NTFS partition from Ubuntu, you will lose all your changes. This is because when Windows 7 is hibernated it writes the system state to a file stored on disk and restores from that file when the system is re-awakened, thus restoring the whole fileystem to a state before any changes made from Ubuntu. In Windows 7 you must avoid using hibernation. With Windows 8, the situation is more complex in that, by default, it uses a hybrid hibernation/shutdown when you shut the system down. Any changes made by Ubuntu will be lost when you reboot into Ubuntu.
With both Windows 7 and Windows 8 (when installed to a legacy mbr partition table) there is usually a 100-200MB boot partition labelled "SYSTEM". Do not mount it - you do not need to. Similarly it is highly advisable to leave any recovery partitions unmounted.
Yes, Ubuntu supports read & write to NTFS without any problem.
You can read all the Microsoft Office docs in Ubuntu using Libreoffice or Openoffice etc. You can have some issues with text format because of default fonts etc.(which you can fix easily) but you will have all the data.
Also you can't use photoshop in ubuntu but their is a good alternative viz. GIMP. If you really need to use photoshop you can use wine (however it doesn't runs very smoothly) or you can have windows installed as a Virtual Machine (using Virtual Box or Vmware) and use it (this is how I use). Same goes for ft studio.
To play Games you can use wine. I used to play dota, Age of Empire, Counterstrike etc. without any issue.
I had similar questions in mind so I kept Ubuntu & Windows both for long time. But I am using Ubuntu only from past 4 years & I loved it, I never missed windows :). Hope this helps.
Ubuntu can read/write ntfs drives
From my experience Libre Office (Ubuntu's clone of Microsoft office) doesn't deal very well with layouts from MS Word, but for the basic xls or doc focuments it should be fine. But there must be plenty of other MS Office like software you could try.
For windows programs it is basically not possible, but there is a software called WINE which can install those windows programs for you and make them run on Ubuntu, even videogames but not all of them are compatible, check the database to see if your applications would be compatible
Conclusion: You don't need to sacrifice Windows to move to Ubuntu. Both can live quite well together on the same computer. So there is nothing to lose trying Ubuntu.
