Bazzite:

• Fedora based, so newer libraries
• Atomic updates, therefore doesn’t break on updates
• Steam and Lutris are preinstalled

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 hate to be the one to break it to you but AIs aren’t actually people. Companies claiming that they are “this close to AGI” doesn’t make it true.

The human brain is an exception to copyright law. Outsourcing your thinking to a machine that doesn’t actually think makes this something different and therefore should be treated differently.

Since you are already familiar with the Steam Deck, I would go with a distro (that’s Linux-speak for version) that uses KDE Plasma, as that’s the desktop environment used by Steam OS. My recommendation therefore is Bazzite or Aurora. Both OSs are developed by the same team using the same core technology. Bazzite is more “gamer focused” (a.k.a. they are pre-installing steam) while Aurora targets more of a developer audience. But I would argue that the differences are, at the end of the day, mainly cosmetic. Aurora is still pretty noob friendly and you could still develop on Bazzite.

Both systems are “Atomic” which basically means that a system update can’t screw up your system. And if you screw something up, then you can “rebase” the system which reinstalls the OS but keeps all your data and installed apps*. It uses flatpak with flathub as its appstore so you have the same apps available as on the Steam Deck.

Now for the downsides: Some apps are a bit harder to install. Mainly apps that need deeper system access such as vpn apps can take a couple more steps to install here than on other distros. There is also no live system. Many distros have a “live mode” where you can test the system before installing. This allows you to check if your hardware is supported. Aurora and bazzite don’t have that.

Lastly the userbase is growing, but other disros such as Mint are still more popular. You therefore might find less specific documentation and tutorials on the internet for it than with other options.

*Technically it’s more complicated than that, there are edgecases of apps that don’t survive a rebase, but don’t worry about that.