I have been using Arch Linux with i3wm for around 5 years for work, on my ThinkPad. I am fairly comfortable with pacman and setting up a distro. I have previously tried Mint, Manjaro, KDE Neon, Elementary, and MX Linux, all for the same use case (Work: where I need a browser, Slack, and a MongoDB GUI).
However, I have been using Windows on my desktop that I use for gaming and the Adobe suite (photoshop and illustrator mainly). With the increasing enshittification of Win11, I want to migrate full time to a Linux system on desktop as well. I prefer a more stable experience on this machine so I chose Pop OS (other suggestions are welcome. I like Plasma). I need some help getting started (I did some preliminary trials on a VM where I was able to run a small game off GOG, but the part I need help with needs some trickery wrt different disks).
PC specs:
Ryzen 3 3300X
16 GB DDR4
1 NVMe boot drive, 1 SATA SSD for games, 1 HDD
RX 570 8 GB
My copies of Photoshop and some of my games are pirated. I'm planning to run a Tiny10 VM for the Adobe stuff but the games will need to run on bare metal linux, off the NTFS formatted game drive.
Edit : Most importantly, Content Manager and mods for Assetto Corsa need to work (not pirated), with my Thrustmaster T128
It’s a standard reply, but are you interested in committing to not Adobe? If you come at it with an open mind, you can get comfortable with Inkscape, Krita, GIMP (adjustment layers soon), or similar. Supporting these projects can give you longer term peace of mind already seeing Adobe’s profit-driven downward spiral.
I do use krita / gimp on my laptop for quick edits. I'm not a professional by any means, the time sunk into learning these in depth isn't really worth it for me.