Technology

Caveat number 3 is the reason I'm still on windows, I take it that's still not an option then.

All the open source alternatives also work on windows. You could try them on your current OS and make the switch to Linux once you're confident you've found a workflow that works for you.

Lightroom: Darktable Photoshop: Gimp (version 3 just released) or Krita Illustrator: Inkscape

One note though: The Windows versions tend to be a bit of an afterthought. Performance can therefore be not as good as the Linux version.

I guess dual boot could be a solution :)

It isn't, really. As @CosmicTurtle0 pointed out in their response, it's mostly finding alternatives to your apps.

Apropos: fuck mozilla for enshittifying the last viable open source browser alternative :( It's the one I have not found an alternative for yet.

Other than that: Thunderbird is WAY better than Outlook anyways. Gimp is arguably lacking some features that Photoshop people are used to, but works just fine (albeit takes some getting used to) for non graphic designers. LibreOffice is functioning better than Microsoft Office by a long shot in Writer and Calc - and up to par in Impress (presentations.) VLC should already be your media player of choice anyways. Element (Matrix) and Telegram desktop applications come with most distros nowadays. Desktop environment of choice is available, from very comfortable to very rudimentary and blazingly fast.

Steam works, many many games on steam work (but then again, maybe prefer gog / good old games, as it is not US based).

PDF readers: okular is probably your best bet, digital signatures work fine but the interface for signing a document could be improved a bit.

For my system, that's kind of it - everything else is native Linux stuff anyways :)

The biggest issue people face when switching to Linux is finding Linux alternatives to their apps.

At this point it's much easier than it was in the 90s

That said, games can still cause issues.

I've found Linux Mint to be easier to install and use than Windows. (I don't have to enter the console and allow myself to setup an offline account because no network drivers were working in Linux. Windows 11 did that).

I've never had issues with graphics drivers, despite using Nvidia cards. The only issues with Linux have been because I broke something when I was messing around.

Get a USB drive, burn a Linux ISO to it, and try it out without installing it.

I’m practically tech illiterate, but managed to switch myself over to Linux after watching some guides a few years ago.

He’s the 1st one I used: https://youtu.be/4mySqL4bCSw

networking is already a higher hurdle IMO

If you've installed fresh Windows off a usb then process is the same for Linux, and you don't really need to mess with terminal by just using the Microsoft Store equivalent on the Linux distro you choose. I didn't find it too different from using Windows or MacOS. I was able to download all my usual programs like Steam and Firefox off the Linux appstore.

But if I had to install a program outside of the Linux store they usually came as a sh or deb file.

If it was deb I'd open terminal where the deb file was and type in sudo dpkg -i filename.deb

And if sh I'd open terminal where the sh file was and type in sh ./name_of_file.sh

That's pretty much the only terminal commands I've needed to know to get started.

When it came to drivers I was lucky enough to have it be pretty much handle everything for me on my old laptop out the box. Main reason I had tried Linux was because Windows ran slow on it, and also an old scanner I had didn't have drivers that supported it anymore. But, on Linux the scanner just worked.

The hardest part is picking a username and seeing what the name of the app store is on the distro