Thinking on switching to linux

AMD drivers: Native, will auto-install as the mesa library, AMD is tits in Linux, it just works.
Gmail: Thunderbird works with Gmail accounts and can sync the calendar.
iTunes: Rhythmbox has a very similar layout to iTunes and so should feel pretty familiar.
Anti-virus: Linux doesn't really need antivirus in the same way Windows does because it's more locked down and doesn't have the same vectors of attack. If someone is hacking a Linux machine, it's a corporate server, not your desktop PC. If you still think you might need one ClamAV is available for Linux distributions. (.deb for Debian derivaties and .rpm for Fedora derivatives)
Py-Charm: As others have noted, Python is installed natively and is usually already implemented "out of the box" on a fresh install. No need for a program to run it, Python is just... there already.
Remote Desktop: Whatever distribution you have will likely also come with a Remote Desktop client. I am unaware of whether or not they will connect natively to iOS.
Star Citizen: You should be able to add this as a non-Steam game to Steam and use Steam's Proton compatibility layer to play it. A few years ago they were literally asking for Linux players to test it with Proton and Easy Anti-Cheat.
VPN: Linux has extensive VPN support including "roll your own" through either OpenVPN or Wireguard.
Windows Games: Steam, using the Proton compatibility layer, which is essentially WINe, just made a little easier. As with Star Citizen, just add it as a non-Steam game and viola.
Windows 10: The Distribution of your Dreams is just around the corner... I've heard Mint isn't a terrible place to start.
- Py-Charm isn't a Python interpreter, it's an IDE. It has a purpose.
- Star Citizen works great on linux with Lutris. https://lutris.net/games/star-citizen/
  
  nearly, it's too bad they're hung up on wine 8 default. have to manually switch to proton since 8-26 is too old
  
  As good as it runs on Windows, anyway... It is still Star Citizen ;P
  (No shade, really promising and most of it is pretty slick and impressive when it's working and I hope they get it stable sometime soon-ish)
- PyCharm is a Java application. And it runs perfectly on Linux.
  
  Depends on your setup. If you use a 4k screen with fractional scaling in Gnome, Pycharm and all Jetbrain editors have blurry text and run under xwayland.
  But vs code works fine, also zed and many others.
- As with Star Citizen, just add it as a non-Steam game and viola.
  You need a viola these days to run a game on linux?
  And people are wondering why Linux is less popular :p
  
  That's where I'm going wrong! I'm missing the viola. Hopefully my distro has it in their repo!
- If OP is a gamer and not too comfortable with Linux, Bazzite is a good choice of distribution.
  It's a so-called "Atomic" distro. Basically what that means is that it works more like Android / iOS than Windows or a traditional Linux distribution.
  The base system including drivers and key applications is built as an image by Fedora. Every 2 weeks or so, they release a new one, and Bazzite users get the new one the next time they reboot. Everything in that base image is tested to work together, so you don't get weird incompatibilities. You can still install all the other software you want, but you tend to do it using Flatpaks rather than rpms/debs. (For someone who doesn't know what that means, Bazzite is a nice OS because that's something you don't need to learn right away.)
  Bazzite is meant to be something that you can install on a SteamDeck, or another handheld gaming PC, but it also works great for desktop machines. But, because it's meant for handheld machines, they've worked extra hard to sand away some of the rough edges.
  If you're a more advanced user, Bazzite is still good because you can still do almost everything you'd do on a normal distribution, you're just discouraged from doing things that affect the base image because it makes updates slower and means they're not guaranteed to work. I actually really like some of the things you're encouraged to do in Atomic distros that you wouldn't do normally. For example, using distrobox as a way to install certain kinds of dev tools. I currently have one project I'm running in an Ubuntu distrobox and another I'm running in a Fedora distrobox. It keeps some of the tools isolated to the "box" where they're needed. I haven't used Fedora much lately, so it's fun to have the more familiar Ubuntu environment in one, and then the other one where I can experiment and learn.
  For someone who doesn't play games, Bazzite probably isn't ideal, but I'd still recommend an Atomic build. There are downsides, but unless you're the kind of person who really likes building their own kernel and making sure it's optimal for their system, it's so nice to have a stable base image so you can focus on the other stuff.
- I think the biggest thing about itunes is that it can be used to write music to iphones and do OS restores, I couldn't get the usb functionality to work with wine so I just use it in a vm personally

What do you use iTunes for? That stood out to me.
Also Chrome works fine on Linux, though Firefox is a better browser even on Windows.
- For anyone who uses Apple Music, I recommend the Cider app. I believe it costs $3 and you get versions for Linux, Mac, and Windows.
  I haven’t found any MP3 players on Linux that I’m totally happy with. All of them have some trivial issue (eg not displaying Album Artist correctly).
  https://cider.sh/
  
  As I pointed out, if you have an older iPod, eg. like an iPod Video or Classic, or any other player that supports it, Rockbox is a thing you can flash onto it.
- I have iTunes, because I have an iPhone. I don’t know of any other good way to get mp3s on my phone. (And to get games for emulators)
  
  Thanks! I didnt realize iTunes was still supported.
  https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2023/12/transfer-music-ubuntu-iphone/amp/
  Seems like you can also use the iOS VLC app to get mp3s on there
  Another method is to use KDE connect to transfer the files, which would also work for your game backups
- Fooyin's a really good alternative and if you can flash Rockbox onto an older iPod that supports that custom firmware, then it'll just function as a normal external drive, no iTunes sync needed unlike with stock Apple firmware.
- I use itunes/icoulds for side loading onto my phone
  
  side loading apps? or files?

Software	Linux support
AMD driver	✅ open-source drivers for CPU and GPU are included in the Linux Kernel and work very well. If you have bleeding edge news hardware, check online in which Kernel version they are supposed and choose Linux distro accordingly
Web Browser	✅ Chrome/chromium, ✅ Firefox. All are commonly available in your distro software repository by default, or otherwise with Flatpak
Web-based email	✅ not dependent on OS. Local Email client software are available, one exemple is Thunderbird.
Office suite	✅ LibreOffice, or anything web-based such as Google Docs will work independently of the OS
Itunes	Many music players/library managers are available on Linux, I don't have any specific recommendations here, I am self-hosting Jellyfin for my music needs
JBL	not sure what you mean here ? Your headset/speakers ? Don't see why it wouldn't work
Music score reader/editor	✅ MuseScore, I also use Guitar Pro (7, 8) inside Bottle (wine) and it works with some tweaks needed for fixing font bug
Antivirus	✅ ClamAV, arguable if you need an antivirus at all
Python	✅ many IDEs are available, a scary amount of Linux distribution rely on Python under the hood 😅
Remote desktop	✅ RDP protocol (many clients available), ✅ Rustdesk, ✅ anydesk, ✅ TeamViewer)
Game platforms	✅ Steam, ✅ Heroic Games Launcher (for Epic and GOG), ✅ Lutris
VPN	✅ OpenVPN and ✅ Wireguard protocols are supported (maybe others), you can find many providers using these protocols. Most ask you to use their app, but digging a little you often have options to configure the VPN connection without installing anything extra. I know Nord on client works on Linux, I haven't tried other. Mulldav is a very frequent recommendation in Linux communities
Windows games compatibility	✅ Wine/Proton via Steam, Lutris, Heroic and Bottles. The only thing that will block you is competitive multiplayer games with Anti-Cheat

There might be some cases even for single-player games where DRM platform-locks you into Windows but that's rare from my understanding.
- I haven't encountered this problem myself.
@op, they may suggest you to change your kernel version to support newer hardware, don't do this unless you know what you are doing and can undo it from cli. its fine 90% of the time but can cause weirdness or no boot.
- This isn't exactly what I recommend. Only in the case the hardware is bleeding edge, as in, it was released less than 6 month ago, then check in which Kernel version it starts to be supported, as well as check the Kernel version shipping with the distribution you are interested in installing. Distro Kernel version >= Kernel version where the driver starts to be included, no problems. Otherwise, check a distro that has more frequent upgrades.
  Things to check: GPU, CPU, WiFi chip, Ethernet chip. In windows you can find the information in the device manager. On Linux (e.g: test with a live USB) the command lspci with display the information.
  A common case would be: I am interested in Debian because I heard it's the most stable, will my AMD 5070XT work with that ? Probably not very well, better Check Ubuntu non-LTS or Fedora.
  I am not recommending op to modify the Kernel from the Linux distro, just consider this point in choosing the distro.

Antivirus is completely unnecessary and terrible on windows and linux... and on linux it's uniquely useless. Everything is installed from a centralized repo, antiviruses won't be of any help at all. antiviruses came about because windows let executables just be run easily and simply and used them as the default way of installing software, this was beyond idiotic and the reason that OS became infested with malware. Linux never made that mistake from the start, and so antivirus is unnecessary.
Norton is basically just malware, however.
- The real reason you won't need antivirus.
- Can you explain how that works?
  Sorry for my ineptitude
  
  On windows you install things from random websites as the primary method of installing stuff, this means anything can install anything and has installers that can install bonus stuff. This is why windows has so much malware.
  On linux, imagine your distro is an app store, ubuntu is an app store, mint is an app store, fedora is an app store. The apps themselves can't manage installation so they can't bundle nonsense with them. you just click install and you get only the thing you wanted and nothing else.
  Since your distro curates all the software, as long as you trust your distro, you'll know there's no malware on your computer, because you get all your software from the distro (or flathub but same idea).
  
  9 times out of 10 the software you’re looking will typically land in your Distribution’s repository, before it lands in the main repository it’ll be vetted for stability and security in a testing repository.
  For example; Steam-Installer is located in the main repository for Debian 12 (Bookworm) they also have a newer version in their Debian 13 (Trixie) repository for testing the next generation of Debian..
  If you want to install software outside your distributions repository you will need to vet the software yourself and make sure it’s compatible with your distro.
  Hope that explains it a little easier.
  
  tl;dr
  You don't need antivirus on Linux in 99% of scenarios
- *Nortan

AMD Drivers: if your GPU is new enough (which it probably is since you're playing Star citizen) it should be just magic here since they come together with the kernel.
Chrome: it's available for Linux, no need to switch. Although Firefox is very nice too.
Gmail: not sure what you mean, Gmail is a website, those are available on any platform. If you meant a desktop email client (which honestly I have never in my life used) there's Thunderbird.
Office 360: Are you talking about Microsoft 365? Is that not a website too? In any case Libre office is a nice alternative to the classical Office desktop app too in case you want that.
I-Tunes: A quick search online reveals people use wine to run the Windows version of iTunes, although I would probably consider migrating. Spotify has a native client and there are some places where you can buy music and have it locally for playback.
JBL: not sure what this is other than a brand for speakers.
Anti-virus: You almost assuredly don't need an anti-virus on Linux, as long as you install software through the proper channels (i.e. using the package manager) chances of virus are so small it's not something to worry about. Most Linux anti-virus serve to check windows binaries in the system to avoid someone using the Linux machine to send virus to Windows users.
PyCharm: it's available for Linux
Remote desktop to iOS: Not sure this is possible even on Windows, I use remmina for remote desktop, it supports several ways of connecting to the other device so maybe see if it works for you.
Star citizen: Never played it but it seems to be playable with Wine.
Steam: While steam is available not all games are compatible, check out https://www.protondb.com/ to see the status of any specific Steam game.
VPN: should be native on Linux, there's a protocol caller OpenVPN which most VPN providers will give you a Config file for that you can use directly on the network applet on Linux.
PS: Next time share the list in text, it makes it easier to reply
- I would say libre wolf instead of firefox, the rest of the list is spot on
  
  For an average user i would recommend Firefox
  For someone tech-savy and privacy focused - LibreWolf
  Why? Some websites will not work properly on LibreWolf because of how hardened it is (not extremely, but just enough to break some things on websites). I don't mean it's bad, it's just not for everyone atm since many people want things to just work™
- Remote desktop to iOS: Not sure this is possible even on Windows, I use remmina for remote desktop, it supports several ways of connecting to the other device so maybe see if it works for you.
  What? This is absolutely possible, and it seems like OP is already doing so from Windows. Remmina is also, as far as I'm aware, a client app, not a server. I would personally recommend Sunshine, with Moonlight as the iOS client, but that's more geared towards gaming. xrdp would be my recommendation if OP is using the built in Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol currently, as that will continue to work with whichever iOS client they are already using. Otherwise, if they're using VNC currently, I would go with TightVNC as there are dozens, if not more, iOS clients.
  
  He said remote desktop to iOS not from iOS, that means he needs a client on his desktop to access the server on the phone. If it was android the answer is scrcpy but I'm not aware of any such tools for iOS (since I don't own an iOS device).
  
  Use chrome remote desktop as of now stream to both my phone and laptop
- iTunes just doesn't work even for really old ones for just to put some music on iPod. Haven't tried with Wine 10 but I don't think that's changed. This is the only reason I keep a Windows VM with an old iTunes in it.
  
  This is exactly why proprietary stuff sucks !
  Edit:
  But I'm glad you're holding to that old iPod without throwing it away ! 👍
- For remote desktop you could try TeamViewer
  Edit: Also, Thunderbird isn't amazing imho. I would also look at Betterbird. Much better :o)
  
  Rustdesk, open source, cross platform, self-hostable, and at least in my experience works great
- Been using chrome remote desktop to stream to my phone an laptop for remote work, but want a no Google Alternative

Gmail is web-based, you can use it with Firefox. For that matter Linux doesn't bind you to Firefox either, you can use Chrome and other browsers. I never used office 360 or Libre, I just use google docs.

emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
vim
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
emacs
- Like… how. Or is that part of the joke.
  
  I mean, he's joking, but:
  AMD Drivers: yeah, this one's not a thing
  Chrome: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/EWW.html
  Gmail: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryMail
  Office 360: https://orgmode.org/
  I-Tunes: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/itunes.el (although this one probably doesn't work)
  JBL: I have no idea what it is
  Muse score: https://github.com/piercegwang/staff-mode
  Anti-virus: I don't know of any, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone listed a plugin for checking files
  PyCharm: This is the one he said to use Vim
  Remote desktop: Emacs can natively open remote files or directories
  Star citizen: obviously not
  Steam: Obviously not, because it's proprietary, I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a GOG plugin
  VPN: https://github.com/anticomputer/ovpn-mode
  There's some truth to the joke that emacs is a very complete Operating system.

AMD Drivers: Good news! They work even better on Linux. Bad news, you're probably referring to the AMD "control panel" type application instead of the drivers themselves, which doesn't have a direct equivalent. The drivers should come pre-installed, though depening on distro you may need to select/install "radv" or "vulkan-radeon" manually. Most of the control panel functionality can be found in other applications, like OBS for recording or CoreCtrl for clock speeds.
Chrome: Although Firefox is pre-installed in most cases, you have full freedom of choice here. Most people find that Firefox works basically the same after using it for a bit, but if it doesn't fit you, there's other options. Google Chrome is most likely available in your distros app store, but there's also less "spying" options like ungoogled-chromium.
Gmail: You can access this on the website, or through a mail client like thunderbird. You can switch if you want to, you're not limited by any means here.
Office 360: Though LibreOffice is a great alternative, some find themselves forced to use MS office for compatibility reasons. This is still possible, buy only in a webbrowser.
ITunes: This is a hard one to find alternatives for, depending on what you use it for. For managing iPhones from a PC, you essentially need Windows or macOS. For playing music, there's plenty of options.
JBL: I'm unsure as I don't use any of their products, but assuming you mean audio related "control panels", there's many options available. Though they may need a bit of tweaking and searching around to get things to sound the way you want.
Musescore: I also don't use this, but it's available on Flathub, meaning you can (and probably should) use your distros "App Store" to install this.
Norton AV: Not many AVs targeting Linux exist, and they're not the greatest quality. Though it's doable to go without one, as long as you don't download and run random files off the internet. Stick to the app store, and you should be totally fine.
PyCharm: This is available on Linux, also in the "app store". There's other IDEs available too, like vscode.
Remote Desktop to iOS: I haven't owned an iOS device since 2019, so I don't know which protocol they use. It's possible this isn't supported at all.
Star Citizen: It looks like this is playable through Proton. You can use Steam (add non-steam game), Lutris, or Bottles to launch non-steam Windows apps/games.
Steam: Works great
VPN: As you didn't put a previous VPN provider here, I'm not able to tell you if it works on Linux. Personally I have a hard time recommending any VPN service, but Mullvad stands out as being the least untrustworthy. Almost all others like Nord, Express, etc. share some common traits that make them very untrustworthy to me.
Windows Games: This is a bit more complicated. Games from the Microsoft Store are very unlikely to run, and require messing about to even try in the first place. Other games made for Windows likely work (even outside Steam), using management tools like Lutris or Bottles is often easier than manually using Wine.
If a tool (or distro) works well for you, it's a good option. Everyone has different opinions on the "best" distro, but since it's very subjective, there is no single "best" distro. There's only 2 distros I recommend against, that's Ubuntu (and close spin-offs) and Manjaro, because they have major objective downsides compared to equivalents like Mint or Endeavour. The distros I generally recommend to new users are Mint and Fedora, but feel free to look around, you're not forced to pick a specific one.
You noted you were likely going to choose Linux Mint, great! It's a "stable" distro, as in, it doesn't change much with small updates. Instead, new release versions (23, 24, 25, etc) come with new changes. Linux Mint comes with an App Store that can install from Flathub, which should be the first place to check for installing new applications.
As for VR, it depends heavily on which exact headset you have, and is not always a great experience on Linux right now (speaking from experience with an Index). The LVRA wiki is a great starting place: https://lvra.gitlab.io/. If you're on a Quest, WiVRN and ALVR exist, though they both have their own downsides. If you're on a PCVR headset from Oculus, your options are more limited. You might also want to consider a different distro, as VR development is moving very fast. Many VR users choose to go with a "harder" rolling release distribution, like EndeavourOS, to receive feature updates quicker.
Also of note, if you have the storage space, you can choose to "dual boot" (even with just one drive). This will give you a menu to choose between Windows and Linux when starting your computer, and will give you time to move stuff over. I generally recommend this, as it provides an option to immediately do a task you know how to do on Windows, when it's absolutely required to do the task asap.
- onlyoffice is also a pretty good option for ms office compatibility
- Btw, ungoogled-chromium needs a extension for extension market access. There's also just Chromium or Brave, Edge or whatever floats your boat.
- Can I run any game on Linux steam if it is bought there?
  
  You can always check proton.db (it keeps a track of how well steam games run on Linux).
  
  1 gotcha for gaming on steam is anticheat enabled games. If you play competitive games where third party anti cheat is required often you will not be able to play them even if they say they support Linux on steam.
  
  Not every game works, but as another user pointed out, ProtonDB is a good resource. If you buy a new game on Steam, and it doesn't work, you can refund it within the first 2 weeks (and below 2 hours playtime) for any reason. That includes "Ths game does not work on my operating system".
- Legacy iOS Kit works for some things too
- Ye use amd adrenaline to control overclocking and settings for my GPU and games. I've seen recommendations for LACT or CoreCtrl
  
  I use LACT. It's very easy to use and works well.

AMD drivers: use the built-in MESA drivers that include the official AMD support.
Gmail: ProtonMail for the service, Kmail for the desktop client.
Chrome: Firefox, or Librewolf if you care about privacy.
Office365: LibreOffice for full FOSS or OnlyOfficr for less freedom but more comfort.
iTunes: depends entirely on what you use it for, but I buy my music mostly off of BandCamp these days.
MuseScore: MuseScore
Norton: Why were you using Norton in the first place? It's practically a virus itself. If you need an antivirus on Linux, you might want ClamAV/ClamTK for something that runs locally only, or Microsoft Defender for Linux.
Py-Charm: Py-Charm, VSCode, Vim, Kate/KWrite
Remote Desktop to iOS: I got nothin'
Star Citizen: Star Citizen
Steam: Steam
VPN: Wireguard
Windows Games: install locally using Wine and then add to Steam as a non-Steam game to use Proton for better support.
Windows 10: run it in a VM if you still need it, or keep it on a separate SSD and dual boot into that.
- Nice list. Why KMail over Thunderbird, I wonder?
  
  Kmail is simple and to the point, and at least in my experience is easier to set up. Bonus, if youre on KDE, it integrates very nicely.
  It's also more performant than Thunderbird.

AMD DRIVERS - Linux's built in drivers
Chrome - Chrome
gmail - gmail
Office 360 - Office 360 (web)
Norton - You don't need such piece of adware in Linux
Py-charm - py-charm
Star citizen - Star citizen though steam
VPN - Proton VPN (my suggestion)
Windows 10 - Fedora KDE
My suggestions if you want a smoother transition, repeated ones have Linux versions
- At least get clamAV setup. No OS is virus immune. And if wine is installed without proper sandboxing ...
  
  SELinux, wine (and other apps) installed via user flatpak with proper permissions configued, coupled with ufw or firewalld, secure boot enabled and an immutable system should be fine, no?
- You need to double up your newlines :)
  
  Thank you, kind stranger, I haven't noticed my formatting was messed up

Off the top of my head:
Gmail or any email: Thunderbird is pretty sweet and I need to use it more, but mostly just use the web clients anyway.
If you own GoG games, you can use Heroic Launcher instead of GoG Galaxy. It's gotten amazingly good, really fast. :)
- I'd recommend Lutris over Heroic both because it runs locally where Heroic is Electron, and because Lutris allows community-based native Linux ports for games where applicable, eg. for Ultima VII: The Black Gate + The Forge of Virtue, Lutris gives you the option of installing that game with Exult instead of DOSbox, for Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II, you have the option to install those with OpenLara, for Doom 1 and 2, you have the option to install those with ZDoom, for Little Big Adventure, you can install that with the ScummVM runner, etc.
  Also, at least for DOS games where you don't have the option to install a community-based modern port, you can use native DOSbox as a runner instead of Windows DOSbox as well through Lutris.
  Oh, and one more bonus particularly for GOG games in Lutris' favor over Heroic, is Lutris uses the offline installers so that if anything ever goes wrong with any given GOG game, you can just reinstall from the offline installer where Heroic operates more like GOG Galaxy or Steam in that it's always downloaded from scratch.
  
  Hey, points for Lutris! Thanks for sharing!
  I've had issues in the past installing stuff with Lutris, although for advanced scenarios like using community engines and stuff, that's really cool. I definitely have both installed on my machine for different reasons. Lutris handles EA / Origin stuff pretty well. (Titanfall 2 and Sims 2 Ultimate (not the Steam one) run beautifully on Linux, truly glorious!)
  Electron annoys me as well, but I will say that I appreciate how Heroic hooks into GoG APIs. It handles auto-updates, cloud saving, play time logging, that kinda stuff that made Galaxy decent and had a degree of convenience-parity with Steam.
  (Maybe Lutris does this too now?)
  For a complete newbie , I'd say Heroic has a bit of a smoother and expected ramp to just "Download game and run." But if you want more control, Lutris definitely has more options!
  I also can't recommend Bottles enough for other games that aren't from distribution platforms. Shockingly simple.

I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
- Yeah, +1 for Bazzite.
  It looks like it's really designed for Linux beginners. They've done a solid amount of work sanding off the rough edges.
  As someone who has been using Linux for decades, I'm also impressed with it for a development system. I chose Bazzite because I wanted to be able to play games easily, but since I installed it a month or so ago, I've barely played any. I've installed a few to make sure they work, but I got interested in another project once I installed it, so for me it's been a machine used to set up and administer a Kubernetes cluster, as well as doing some Go / Javascript development.
  In the early 2000s, I was one of those guys who ran Gentoo and liked building all my own software on my own machine so that it was perfectly tweaked for what I wanted to do. But, these days, I really like having an OS that's stable and gets out of my way, so I can focus on more interesting things.
- Fedora (and related distros, including Bazzite) are indeed superior. The gap is even larger when comparing Atomic distros... sorry to say... Red Hat's money does show! Now, for many to use any Red Hat's variant, whether because of ideology, non-American (hat tip to lemmy.ml/u/eugenia), ethical, pro-human rights (no getting big checks from US army), etc... I find it concerning. The only one I find it as a valid option, specially if for an corporation in the US, is Alma Linux. I find Mint the most newbie friendly and also extremely stable. Like you, I dislike Cinnamon enormously, (puzzled why they decided to ditch KDE!) but I still recommended to new people in Linux. Personally, I still in the quest to find the one for me (been with OpenSUSE for a few months but with my eyes on TuxedoOS already). I agree that Atomic distros seems to be the future for most users, but beside Bazzite, don't think the others are equally stable (someone correct me if I am wrong). Bazzite however, as expressed above, comes from a murky parent that many linux fans, specially those in lemmy.ml, should be wary of. Think of it as Android, as a phone OS is great, probably the best there is today, but coming from the corporation as it comes from, from the country it comes from that uses sanctions as it does, should be a 'no thank you' for most in the world. Now, Debian also is a US registered distro, yes, but, unlike Red Hat-IBM or Google's products, it is far more universal and with enough human capital abroad that easily can fork it, it need be. Same apply as the Linux kernel (that is why China went that route). I however, for the future, I like the idea of Arch, and wonder if ever can be made stable and waiting for someone to propel Arch into a stable variant and not just another "gaming distro" (crossing my fingers in KDE's new distro!). Till, then, most users I think we should still recommend some veteran Debian based and Mint still checks most boxes. [My first post in this type of social media!!]
  
  ethical, pro-human rights (no getting big checks from US army), etc… I find it concerning.
  Why do you find it concerning from the perspective of using the distro? the software is still open source, and it's not like they're benefitting from user-count. Redhat makes its money selling support, if you don't like their business model, simply don't pay them for support, and you get all the benefits and none of the ethical qualms.
  KDE’s new distro!). Till, then, most users I think we should still recommend some veteran Debian based and Mint still checks most boxes.
  I don't think these ethical fears are grounds enough when completely unsubstantiated to be recommending a distribution that's fundamentally worse for beginners.
- Absolutely aggree about KDE, I helped a bunch of people switch to Linux, and for experienced users, KDE was the key. Not only it works better, but it also follows the logic people are used to, but with more freedom.
- Have to agree. Mint runs on long term support versions of Ubuntu releases. A lot of times this can cause issues with gaming because the kernel is so out of date, and thus the graphics driver is as well. Plus, they have snaps which are terrible compared to flatpaks.
- I have a deep hatred of flatpak and so strongly disagree with this comment.
  
  Your hatred of flatpak is probably stemming from your experience with other systems, when recommending for beginners, you must look past such biases.
- I appreciate the fact that you went through your reasoning in such detail. Most of the time people are just like "use xxxx" with nothing more and comments like that are pretty worthless for someone with little familiarity with Linux.
  
  Thank you, feel free to DM if you want more info on any distros or have any questions. I could go on for ages.

Add Steam to "Windows gaming for Linux." Every game I bought on Windows runs great in Linux Mint. Steam has a native Linux client and ot uses a Wine layer called Proton that has all the settings for each game.
- To be clear while that is true there are games that won't work at all on Linux, because of anticheat.
  And sometimes you need to read protondb for tweaks so that your games run on Linux.

Star Citizen runs just fine under linux. For the most part, anyway. Being under active dev it breaks occasionally, but the Linux User Group has always gotten it working again so far.
https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helper
I would recommend using Wine directly over using Lutris right now, but that's an option you can pick in this script. Join the discord if you have trouble, people are friendly there if you're polite.
Don't use Proton/Steam for it.

Linux has native AMD drivers, no need for anything extra!
- Awesome had heard issues with drivers and both my Gpu and cpu are amd so wanted to be safe
  
  Its only nvidia GPUs that's have trouble
  
  Talking about desktops, there may be some issues with Radeon RX 7000.
  If your hardware is that new, please stick to a distro with the newest kernel, like Fedora. There is a gaming oriented distro based on Fedora, called Bazzite, but I don't know how big its community is, and how much it differs from vanilla Fedora.
  There are also a lot of choices in the Arch family, like Garuda, Endeavour, and Manjaro. However, please stay away of those since you probably don't have any experience on Linux. Manjaro is not really Arch, and can face issues with AUR packages, and the rest may break during updates.
  Try the distro of choice in live mode. If you have enough RAM (like 16GB+), you can try to download Steam and some small game to see how it works. Keep in mind that, while in live mode, all files are stored in RAM.

Gmail: any paid hoster
pycharm is on linux
Star Citizen runs in Proton, no?
Remote desktop: look into VNC, i like Rustdesk
VPN: Wireguard
Norton AV: no need
Windows 10: scrap it
- Yup, Star Citizen runs perfectly under Proton. There's even a script to get it as set up for you. https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/lug-helper
  
  Yes it runs fine I played it a lot on my system. It was unplayble when I tested on Hyprland due to interaction click being unusable but worked fine on sway

Lol that table is pretty strange
What does "Windows 10" mean? XD
Also btw dont expect all games to work in Wine. You should use Steam if you want a pain free experience.
- i think he wants a rec for a linux distro
  
  Hannah Montana Linux is always a good start
  
  GuixSD then /jk
- Nortan Antivirus 😂

iTunes: Quod Libet
pyCharm: native
Windows games: Proton
- Proton vs wine what’s the difference?
  
  From what i understand (probably wrong), Valve forked WINE and did their own development on it.
  
  Proton is Wine but tweaked for the sole purpose of running games, so it packs a bunch of extra stuff needed to make games run well together.
  Usually there's also a long list of per-game tweaks and changes to make sure it runs, it's all preconfigured so you press play in your launcher and it works. Not need to change settings whenever you want to play a game.
  You can still use regular Wine but you'll have to set up a bunch of stuff yourself, and eventually you run into a game that needs a different version of something that breaks another game, you get into prefix management and it's a mess. Or oh this game runs better when we pretend to be Windows 7 but this one works best with Windows 10. Proton just does it all for you, every game gets its own space with all the correct settings from the get go, and you just launch into the game and play.
  
  Proton is let Valve make an optimized Wine setup for you through Steam
- +1 for Quod Libet

Chrome is available on Linux. Norton is spyware. And there is an Apple Music web app that you can use. And try Fedora first.
- Chrome [...] is spyware. Don't use chrome.

Just how will you manage to open gmail on linux?
People have been trying for decades, there is just no way
- I hope someday they are finally able to create a web browser that can run on Linux
- what ? Thunderbird exists...
- I haven't checked lately but on GNOME you add Google account to your Online accounts and gmail is automatically added to your email client (Evolution in some diatros).

I self host sunshine and use the moonlight client on iOS for my remote desktop. It’s meant for in home game streaming, but using Tailscale I can connect from anywhere.
- Tailscale?
  
  Yeah, Tailscale!! It’s a very nicely packaged front end for Wireguard, which is a “mesh vpn” if I’m remembering my terms properly. Basically makes all my devices think they are on the same network at all times, and provides convenient names to use to connect to them.

gmail -> proton or tuta if you don't care about IMAP, or any other decent email provider (I use disroot, I set my brother up with mailfence, they both seem quite good. I use them with thunderbird) pycharm -> not an IDE, but I like VSCodium (vscode without MS)
- also, check out some of the firefox forks. I personally really like Floorp since it lets me put the tab bar at the bottom and customise the UI! Librewolf is also decent but some of its privacy anti-fingerprinting stuff makes it a bit annoying to use
- Proton owner came out as big creep, so don't really recommend.
  
  I saw it as pandering to trump, so his administration doesn't make proton illegal in USA
  
  oh that’s sad. I mostly switched out of proton bc I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. Also, not having IMAP sucksss because both the official proton and tuta apps are SLOW

Worth trying Only Office and Libre Office side by side to see which one works better for your workflow.

https://cider.sh/ is an Apple Music client for Linux.
- Interesting use of itch.io to handle payment in this case.
- Closed source. Who's to say it ain't credential sniffing and spyware?

Remote desktop you can use rustdesk
- Remmina is nice to manage remote access, see https://remmina.org/
  I heard negative criticism of rustdesk in terms of security, can anyone confirm or refute this?

Proton mail has an email and VPN together as a package.

Depending on what VPN software you use, they may already have a linux version. All of the big-name ones do, as well as a good chunk of the smaller ones.
For anti-virus, you don't need one in Linux. Even for Windows I would recommend using the built-in AV, rather than Norton.
Edit: I see you use Norton VPN. That one doesn't have a linux version. Check out Mullvlad or Nord VPN.
- Most VPNs support Wireguard, which is built in to Linux. If your VPN provider doesn't have a Linux app, you can usually usually download a Wireguard config file from them and use it on Linux. You can import a WireGuard config into NetworkManager using a command like:
  
  sudo nmcli connection import type wireguard file /tmp/example.conf
  Then it should appear in the network list in KDE / GNOME / whatever other desktop environment you're using.
- Honestly a VPN that doesn't support Linux at least through manual connection settings, run away. All reputable and even the sketchier VPN providers support Linux, because that's what the privacy crowd uses, not supporting it implies those aren't even the target user base at all. It's a red flag. It's not a VPN for privacy or getting another country's Netflix.
  I'd trust Norton about as much as my ISP, so unless you use public WiFi somewhat often, it doesn't add much value, just the downsides of captchas everywhere. They're probably analyzing the traffic to map out malware campaigns and such, which would make sense but isn't very private.
  The business model of antivirus companies is fear, and they sell the solution to that fear. They have a VPN because people assume VPN means more security, of course they'll sell you one. At best they block known malware domains and IPs, which is utterly useless on Linux anyway.
  If you want a VPN get a real VPN.

Remmina for Remote Desktop, awesome piece of software.
- Also: Rustdesk, Anydesk, TeamViewer, and Spice

I just switched to linux mint and the install was a lot easier than i thought. Works fine. I love the customization, the lightweight OS and its quite easy to use. Barely needed to use the terminal. The only problems i've faced is discord screenshare not showing my cursor and time to time lagging my games, gaming has not been without issues, mostly played deadlock and it has in my experience came with some bugs.

Gmail as in email client? Thunderbird
Anti virus? Just need common sense. Dont visit shady site and download random executable
Windows? Try linux mint if this your first time. I heard PopOS is good if you play games.
- Honestly, Mint works well for games too. Been running it for the last year. :)
  
  My bad. I run linux mint myself but i dont play games on it. I heard popos was great for gaming but glad to hear linux mint is great too.

If you have nothing to lose, ie. if you don't play anything with anticheat or you don't use any productivity software with crazy DRM platform-locking you into Windows, do it, switch over.
The bulk of all games will run in Proton or even vanilla WINE now and the minority that's platform-locked into Windows is anything that uses kernel-level anticheat, if you only play single-player games or even virtual board games like Civilization, those will broadly work fine in WINE/Proton and even in the case of the aforementioned Civilization, those games starting from Civ5 onward even have native Linux ports, but the Windows versions tend to perform better in Proton, and as for productivity software, there's plenty of alternatives to things like Maya, Photoshop, Lightroom, or Premiere/AfterEffects to choose from that isn't platform-locked anywhere, eg. Blender as a Maya alternative, Krita or GIMP as a Photoshop alternative, RawTherapee or Darktable as a Lightroom alternative, and KdenLive or Davinci Resolve as a Premiere/AfterEffects alternative.
Oh, and as for Illustrator, you have Inkscape as an alternative, and for Paint Tool SAI, you got MyPaint as an alternative.
As for a good distro to get you started, Debian or OpenSUSE seem pretty solid for beginners, and Debian Stable at least has a backports repo for newer software, and there's also ChimeraOS if you're building your PC into a games console.
Also, if you're looking for a good Foobar2k or iTunes alternative, Fooyin is great for that, and Whipper's a good CD ripper and basically an open Exact Audio Copy clone, although it's text-based. You could also use CUERipper in WINE as another good open alternative to Exact Audio Copy, which is proprietary. CUETools will work fine in Mono as well.

Pycharm has a Linux release

star citizen LUG has a quick start guide, wiki, and helper tool to conduct install https://github.com/starcitizen-lug/knowledge-base/wiki/Quick-Start-Guide

Maybe add Only Office.

You're still using itunes and not apple music?
- Apple Music can be replaced with Cider on Linux. Many use iTunes on windows for device management, the only thing that I know for this on linux is libimobiledevice.
  
  Cider has gone proprietary. Use Apple Music PWA instead.
- Don't really use it for that, use it for side loading onto my iOS device

If wine does not work try adding the game in steam and use proton that way.
For ppx SoftMaker is better, for Documents that have objekts can leave the paperarea (even partial) like circles i suggest using LibreOffice draw

Keep in mind that wine works not only with games, so if you need to run some windows program you can use it too

Pico might be a good way to jump shop on VR. Not sure if you can change OS on current hardware. But next purchase you have plenty of options.

To start, I’d recommend checking out Flathub and seeing what’s available there. Flatpaks are relatively new but anything there can be installed on basically any Linux distro. It’s organized by category so you can see your options.
Chrome is available on Linux if you’re worried about switching. Firefox is usually the default and what I use just because I’ve always used it (plus, it fully supports ad blockers whereas Chrome now cripples them). Also, Chromium is essentially the exact same as Google Chrome. Both are made by Google and Chrome is just Chromium before Google adds all its branding and stuff.
Don’t worry about antivirus. ClamAV is there if you want to run a scan but you don’t need anything like Norton.
VPN: check your provider. Most work with OpenVPN or have a Linux client.
Gmail obviously works in the browser but there’s a ton of desktop email clients. To give three examples I’ve used:
Geary is a simple, clean email client that just does email does it well. Not very customizable, though.
Thunderbird (made by Mozilla) has more features/options and supports extensions. If Geary is too simple, Thunderbird is a good middle ground.
Evolution is like the Microsoft Outlook that comes with the paid Microsoft Office Suite. It has a calendar and all that enterprise-focused stuff. Probably overkill but it’s there if you need it.
Windows 10 is listed and I’m not quite sure what you mean but you can always run it in a virtual machine if you need it. I use Gnome as my Desktop Environment. Gnome Boxes is super simple. VirtualBox is more complex but has every option I’ve ever needed.
Don’t worry too much about the Desktop Environment thing. KDE and Gnome are the biggest two and both are pretty much equally capable. (You can also always install stuff made for the other if you want. It just might not match the theme.) There’s loads of desktop environments but don’t be intimidated by all the choices. Some are stripped down and designed for older or low-spec computers. There’s one focused on Chinese users. You can ignore most while you get your feet wet.

VR on linux is scuffed. https://lvra.gitlab.io/ refer to this site for vr on linux. If you play VRchat, its pretty much unplayable in vr on linux, its literally somehow a better experience on quest standalone
- I don't play VRChat myself, but I have to disagree. I'm in several Linux VR groups, and the general sentiment is that it's not as easy to set up, but works well for the more popular games, including VRChat. This is similar to my experience. There's good resources (like LVRA) to help people set things up, or when they're running into issues. I'm also not saying VR on Linux is flawless, far from it, but to describe it as just "scuffed" without context doesn't explain the whole state of it.
  
  Dang. I tried for a bit to get it working, but I couldn't get it over 20 fps
- I had tried ALVR in the past, on my Quest 2, but it sucked. A couple of months have passed and I should probably test again.
  
  Try WiVRN, it's not built on SteamVR, and doesn't have the same issues SteamVR does. You can get it through a flatpak or by using Envision, as described on the LVRA wiki.

Linux Mint or Nobara would be great beginner distros and would each be great for gaming. If gaming is more important, I would lean towards Nobara. If general use is more important, Mint.
Keep in mind that you can try most of these out in a Virtual Machine. Some others to consider are PikaOS and CachyOS. I'm also working on my migration, and I install and set up everything with each ISO as if I was doing it for real, to see what hiccups I might run into. It will be slower, but it's just a trial run, so just expect things to be faster when you do it for real!

oculus software for my vr
Check https://lvra.gitlab.io/ for plenty of options. I'm playing VR on Linux but it's using SteamVR with the Index.
- Amd GPU and a quest one seam to be in the clear, so I'll look into it

Linux mint is great

If you've already tried setting up Win 10, Mint should be downright enjoyable. It's much more user friendly in my humble opinion.

JBL sounds like your audio gear, depends on what. Bluetooth, USB audio ot 3.5mm jack connections generally work fine. Some DACs that require custom Windows drivers might not work.
Gaming stuff, Steam will have you covered, Lutris, Heroic, or itch.io for non-Steam stuff. The one unintuitive thing you have to do once you log in is to go to Steam Settings and check the "Use Steam Play for All Titles". Just like that, 75% of your library that only have a Windows version will suddenly be playable and you'll hardly notice a difference: just Download then click Play, that's it (maybe a bit slower launch time).
I would recommend Firefox or Librewolf over Chrome as you have done already, but you should know that Chrome and Chromium do work on Linux FYI.

Remote Desktop to iOS: I use moonlight/sunshine and it works great

There are a lot of software alternatives depending on your needs and preferences. You may want to take a look here or there.
Linux is full of options to let you build the best system for you. That means you'll have to invest some time to decide what you want (starting with the distro). Moving to Linux is discovering a brand new world where it's easy to get discouraged and flooded by the freedom you're given.

Regarding oculus software: If you need the actual oculus software for some reason (say, if you're using a rift S) your only option is a windows VM with full access to your GPU (and possibly your USB controller), either via looking glass or single GPU passthrough. Both options are a little hard to wrap your head around and annoying to set up but I'm sure your favorite search engine can help.
As other comments have mentioned, ALVR and SteamVR are solid options of all you need is the "screen sharing" part.

Just here to recommend Zorin OS, in case Mint doesn't work out.

for a remote desktop app that also works on ios there's Rustdesk. everything else already had great suggestions in this thread

"VPN"? Which?
- Use Norton right now
  
  Drop Norton, full stop.
  Take a look at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/vpn-overview/ to get a better overview of what you need to look for in a VPN.
  
  Adding to this, don’t use Norton or any other anti-virus provided VPN.
  Mullvad works great and has an app.
  NordVPN works also great. I use KDE and there was a plugin to manage NordVPN from the task bar.
  
  If you're not tied to it there are other options that with great on Linux. Mulvad for one.

Recommend you Linux mint.
But preferably use LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) instead of Mint based on Ubuntu
- What's the difference between the two?
  
  One is based on Ubuntu, the other on Debian. I wouldn't recommended and don't like Ubuntu myself cause of their decisions in the FOSS world

someone got oculus software to work through wine with access to hardware a while ago and they’re working on something called Oculus Ameliorated which might be simpler to get working

Just to chime in, since a lot of people are recommending Thunderbird as an email client. I would rather check out Betterbird. It's just smoother with more bug fixes which has not been prioritized in Thunderbird.
- Or Evolution, it's pretty neat. But they didn't look for a groupware client or Outlook alternative.

What is this table from? Is it from some website?
- 80% sure it’s Google Sheets. If not it’s very very close.
- Looks like a table he made himself, in OneNote I think