I run Windows inside Qubes for work and get by well, but of course I took the time to learn how to do that and have a beefy workstation. I also don't have any special requirements for GPU acceleration or other hardware usage.

Side note, if you're not aware you should use qBittorrent, Transmission, BiglyBT or Deluge for torrents.

I've been at a Microsoft/.NET shop for over a decade that has a 90's MS employee as a key board director. However, MS is making such poor decisions with Windows and MSSQL licensing that it's become a high priority to migrate off everything they do going forward. I think it will take enterprise a few years but MS has signed their own death warrant on their old stack - good thing they bought GitHub and went all in on WSL.

uTorrent jumped the shark many many years ago. qBitTorrent is what you want probably since it's an open source uTorrent clone without the ads (alternatively Transmission if you want something really basic that just works).

I'm pretty sure there will be a way to hack things... e.g. blocking the ad servers in your host file...

Not saying it will be great, but screw the system if it only works against us.

The hosts file is ignored for Microsoft's own domains.

There is always an answer...

You could even address it at router level if things went really sideways.

utorrent became adware years and years ago... qbittorrent is a nice alternative.