Truth be told, we also have a lot of app stores as well, but I'd say there's still room for improvement.

For instance in the Windows store, I wasn't able to find:

• Notepad++
• Visual Studio Code
• Rust installer

On macOS, I've mainly used MacPorts for the open source packages, but brew is probably what people would normally stick to. They are not an officially supported though.

Linux distributions (the right name is probably GNU/Linux) are all based on the same open source kernel, which aims to centralize all the drivers in a common place. Because of this, the drivers are kept up to date and your hardware will be supported for a longer time.

I tend to hold on to my hardware for 5-10 years (I may upgrade and replace parts once it goes out of warranty to extend its life). So, this is very nice feature of this ecosystem for me

I do not use much of the Windows scripting infrastructure, and, over time, I tried to recreate the Linux ecosystem via Cygwin, MSYS2, or WSL with limited success. WSL2 is continuously getting better, and is close to what I need. Also, choco is getting there, but it needs more polishing.

In case of macOS, although it seems to be a Unix system and the GNU tooling is readily available, the low level infrastructure is very different. The XNU kernel is very different, and its acronym stands for "X is Not Unix".

In case you just want to test the waters, it's really easy to experiment with any distribution in a virtual machine. In case you're wondering why it's free, here's an excellent explanation on this from the Debian team

Creating an equivalent ecosystem from scratch is estimated to billions of US dollars, so please consider making a donation for any part of it.

There are quite a few options available for experimenting and most of them are free. So, it's easy to experiment up until you find the right one for you

There are many people out there that want to keep using their existing hardware for as long as possible and this is easier and possible because a lot of the code is free and open source.

Because it is free and open source, major cloud vendors have adopted Linux and tweaked to their needs/infrastructure. That means that renting a private server for whatever reason is probably going to be cheaper if you go with a Linux flavor, so you might as well learn to use one properly

Many tools nowadays are cross-platform, and you may have used some of them already:

• Browsers
  • Firefox
  • Chromium
  • Microsoft Edge
• Gaming - Steam platform is available
• Video player - VLC
• Editors
  • VS Code
  • Sublime

Also, if you don't manage to find an equivalent app for your needs in the ecosystem, most of the vendors tend to offer some online alternative of their products, so please keep this mind, while you try to create a workflow that works best for you

Depending on the PC/laptop that you own/plan to buy, Linux may or may not available for you. Support for Linux is more common nowadays, but you can always easily try it out with a bootable USB stick. Here are instructions on how to create one for Debian or Ubuntu, but you can easily find instructions for other distributions.

I've personally used both KDE and GNOME, and would probably be fine with either of them, as I don't have advanced requirements.

Many distributions ship GNOME by default, mostly because of the KDE QT library dependency concern. This has been addressed already, so this choice is mostly a historical artifact.

You can check out some screenshots here and here to get a rough idea of what you'd bet getting into.

I would choose:

• KDE, if you want to do advanced tweaking. Some people almost recreated Windows, see details
• GNOME, if you want to go with something simple, that doesn't get in your way

Having a secure system should always be at the top of your mind, so whatever distribution you choose, please factor this in.

Many releases for a given distribution may be shorter lived, so you may need to plan for more frequent updates to stay protected.

If gaming is an important area for you, then you should be aware that Steam is your main/only solution. Valve officially supports only Ubuntu, but instructions on how to use it are readily available for other distributions (e.g. Debian and Arch)

Getting support when you are stuck is important to everyone, so once you get to your short list, please try to identify appropriate support forums and see for yourself how much traction they have.

Some external stats:

• The 2023 Stack Overflow survey
• Distrowatch
• Reddit Linux popularity

If you're bound to some special tools, like Photoshop for instance, it's a good idea to do some research in advance. For example, there might be good enough online alternatives, it may support Linux as well, or there could be good free alternatives (like Krita/GIMP for our particular example)