Agree

Linux doesn't do anything to files to worry about corrupting the windows files and install. The worry is a windows update breaking the bootloader which happened a few times in that year, which I solved by using a livecd to rebuilt the bootloader

Depending on your distro, you will first need to install the files system drivers for NTFS. Then, you can add the drives to the /etc/fstab file which will automatically mount them on start up to a location designated. I used this method for a year before I decided to fully go to linux.

Depends on the mod manager, generally that makes it more difficult to run a mod manager through proton to connect to a native linux version. 'r2modman' is what I use for thunderstore available modded games. Until Nexus finishes their mod manager it's manual modding through file downloads.

If you're super worried you can clone your partition into a image file and mount it later and it will be an exact copy of what you have now. Granted you have disk space for that.

Now I have to try this out, this looks so good

Thanks for the notice!