Okay I know this sounds like click bait but trust me switching over to linux requires you to first master the open source software that you will be replacing your windows/mac counterparts with. Doing it in an unfamiliar OS with no fallback to rely on is tough, frustrating and will turn you off of trying linux. DISCLAIMER: I know that some people cannot switch to linux because open source / Linux software is not good enough yet. But I urge you to keep track of them and when so you can know when they are good enough.
The Solution
So I suggest you keep using windows, switch all your apps to open or closed source software that is available on linux. Learn them, use them and if you are in a pinch and need to use your windows only software it will still be there. Once you are at a point where you never use the windows only software you can then think of switching over to linux.
The Alternatives
So to help you out I'll list my favorites for each use case.
MS Office -> Only Office
- Not for folks who use obscure macros and are deep into MS Office
- Has Collaboration and integration with almost all popular cloud services..
- Has a MS Office like UI and the best compatibility with MS Office.
Adobe Premiere -> Da Vinci Resolve
- It is closed source but available on linux
- Great UI, competitive features and a free version
Outlook -> Thunderbird
- Recently went through massive updates and now has a modern design.
- Templates, multi account management, content based filters, html signatures, it is all there.
Epic Games, GOG, PRIME -> Heroic
- Easy to use, 1 click install, no hassel
- Beautiful UI
- Automatically imports all the games you have bought
PDF Editor -> LibreOffice Draw
- Suprisingly good for text manipulation, moving around images and alot more.
- There might be slight incompatibilities (I haven't noticed anything huge)
- But hey, it's free
How do I pick a distro there are so many! NO
So finally after switching all the apps you think you are ready? Do not fall into the rabbit hole of changing your entire OS every two days, you will be in a toxic relationship with it.
I hate updates and my hardware is not that new
- Mint - UI looks a bit dated but it is rock solid
- Ubuntu - Yes, I know snaps are bad, but you can just ignore them
I have new hardware but I want sane updates
- Fedora
- Open Suse Tumbleweed
I live on the bleeding edge baby, both hardware and software
- Arch ... btw
Anyways what is more important is the DE than the distro for a beginner, trust me. Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, etc. you can try them all in a VM and see which one you like.
SO TLDR: Don't switch to linux! Switch to linux apps.
Great write-up, but in my opinion this is exactly the wrong way around.
That way, you don't gain anything from your "switch" up front.
Better to switch to Linux and keep the apps you know wherever possible. Office, Teams, Photoshop, Lightroom and many others are available as web apps now. For many others, there are versions ported to Linux or running well in Wine. Finally, Gnome Boxes makes it trivial to integrate a small 50GB Windows VM to run apps where there's no other option.
Then you can slowly migrate to Linux-specific open source tools, in your own time.
It helps if you can get away from an app-centric view of computing to a result-centric view:
You don't need MS Office, you want to create/edit documents, tables or presentations.
You don't need Photoshop, you want to edit images.
You don't need Outlook, you want to connect to Exchange.
Almost all tasks are possible to do on Linux if you change your workflow a bit. Some aren't, especially when you're forced to collaborate with others in a professional setting. In that case, you can still minimize your Windows usage to what's necessary, by using Wine, web apps, dual-booting, using 2 devices, running a Windows VM inside Linux, or running a Linux VM inside Windows, depending on your needs.
I highly disagree with recommending regular users to use virtual machines, it defeats the whole purpose, at the end of the day, you are still using windows, and on top of that, it adds additional complexities that can only create frustration to users.