Ignorance? Not compared to my lack of knowledge and understanding of these things your not ignorant! The win8 and the drive it was on was given to me by my neighbor who seemed intent on my learning how to use win8. (I wasn't that interested, but I think he was just looking for a "teaching project" to occupy his time...) He said I could just plug in the drive and boot up to win8 when the computer was started. Doesn't work that way I guess without Win8 having been installed while the drive was actually in my computer instead of his. Probably fo rthe reasons you describe above. The guy that built my computer explained why, but his explanations always go over my head. So when it didn't work he told me to go ahead and just keep the drive, so now I have an extra drive to play with. I think I'll just wipe out that non-working Win8 and try out Linux.
So you fly RC? That's a lot of fun. I used to fly those a lot, but haven't in a few years now. Even scratch built a few. My favorite is a 1/4 scale piper cub that I just loved to fly. I should get out one of my old trainers and go see if I can even still do it without crashing! (When this rain storm goes away...) I've flown the RC simulators a couple of times on other people's computers and really liked that I could plug in my transmitter and use that as the control. I imagine that is a great way to train someone. They can make all the mistakes they want and learn from them without having to spend $100+ on repairs after each mistake!
Now I mainly fly Microsoft's flight sim 10, but I fly with United Virtual Airlines, mainly 737s and 747s all over the world. All the planes I fly with them are top quality add ons that make Microsoft's stock planes look like trash and make a joke out of their theme "As real as it gets". With the advanced level of realism the add ons (including reporting software, advanced real time weather simulation, etc, etc) I found I enjoy the detail of planning all aspects of a commercial jetliner flight as much as I enjoy the actual flying of it. But in reading up on blogs from those who have tried doing this on Linux it seems while it's possible to get the basic flight sim to work with some limitations, and also get a few of the add ons to work, again with some limitations, many of the other software I use along with it just won't work or involves so much work and hassle to get it to work that it's just not worth the effort. But as long as I can still boot up to Win7 for flight sim and use Linux for everything else that would give me the best of both worlds!