I'm one of them, and currently looking into Linux, if I can migrate my Photoshop tools/brushes/gradients/etc successfully over to another program that is compatible.
My only hang up after that is gaming, and I feel that can be resolved with dual boot to win10.
You might be surprised by how capable linux gaming has gotten. The only thing really missing is AAA FPS type games. That doesn't matter at all to me, but its something to consider. Just about everything else plays right out of the box.
Gaming on Linux works now. I play every game I care for.
Gaming on Linux is superior, on a lot of games! I dual booted and ran benchmarks on Windows 11 and Fedora, same hardware. Ran nothing but the OS and Steam in the background, (gaming mode on and off), oddly found better performance with gaming mode off, then tried the same thing with Fedora. 5-10% higher framerates in Fedora running Proton.
Tried the same thing with synched Firefox tabs, half a dozen open tabs, telegram and discord running. Fedora sometimes hit 15% higher framerates.
Yeah I've been playing Elden Ring with no crashes since switching to Mint.
Games work better on Linux than you might expect. Check out protondb for specific titles you're thinking of. Most things I've just hit "play" on steam or heroic and they work n
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While going for another program, ideally non proprietary, with a native Linux version would be ideal, I would not be surprised if running Photoshop on Linux with wine was a viable option these days. Or will be in a not-too-distant future.
As for games, what the others have said. Unless you're into a specific multiplier game with a kernel level "anticheat", then it should be fine.
In fact, I suspect Photoshop, rather than gaming, is much more likely to be the reason you'd have to dual boot.
While I don't generally recommend it, NVDIA has streaming options for games on Windows. You can even run this from a browser if you wanted, all within Linux. I would be surprised if you couldn't use this for Photoshop or an alternative existed.
It's just important to keep in mind this isn't your computer, its a subscription to someone else's computer. I just thought I'd mention this because it's not commonly suggested and it's nice to know avaliable options.
You can also just get a separate computer with MacOS for Photoshop and ditch the kernal games or maybe play them on Mac if they're low end, and use Linux for everything else.
Maybe rootkits will be gone soon. 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop.
Breaking the preview pane in the final update for windows 10 was a nice touch.
I have had 3 more friends in the last 24 hours tell me they are now going to make the switch in the near future. This is in addition to 2 who already have. This makes a total of 8 people I know personally who have already or will be switching this year/early next year.
I do not know a tonne of people, it's really pretty impressive.
I'm not only refusing to downgrade to Windows 11, my home system got switched to Linux (with the support of my SO) despite me thinking Linux is probably the single least user-friendly system I've ever had the misfortune to use.
That's how bad Windows 11 looks to me.
And vast majority would rather become ransomware targets than try Windows alternatives.
Linux is a great option nowadays especially if you go for one of the more mainstream distros. Otherwise Windows 11 IoT LTSC is the best of a bad lot.
"upgrade"
Same, just got a new framework 13 laptop, it's not running Windows, sleep, fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, gpu drivers it all works. Linux now. All the games I currently play just work out of the box, steam just adds proton to the download. I don't use Microsoft Office apps though, more than happy with the alternatives.
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