You could always try for the best of all worlds?
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For the longest time, I maintained a Windows partition for video games. These have now moved entirely to the Steam Deck, however, and I haven’t booted into the Windows partition in ages.
I guess I actually don’t need it any more.
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Besides games with anti-cheat, simulation(driving/flying) and VR, linux is on par with windows when it comes to gaming. Even most raytracing works just fine, if with a performance penalty. But vkd3d has been making good advancements and I don’t doubt it’ll get even better for dx12 titles. DX11/9 with dxvk is already faster than windows in most games 
Depends on the video driver. When you have a dedicated video chip in addition to the GPU integrated in your CPU, the video support can switch between the integrated GPU in the CPU or the external GPU depending on load (this is called “Optimus technology” by NVidia). On average you should be using the integrated GPU most of the time and so not using the external GPU, resulting in a much lower TDP, temperature, fan noise… and battery drain.
On Linux this depends if you are using the “closed” NVidia driver or the open source Nouveau driver. The NVidia driver handles the whole thing all by itself, but with the Nouveau driver this requires some setup.
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You might consider Gentoo as your next distribution… it takes such an effort (almost as the good old days) to install them properly that you won’t even consider touching them back.
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After reading this rather long topic, It is still not clear to me why you expect that.
Generally, there are two kinds of Linux distros: some leave room for a lot of tinkering (Arch, Gentoo) so they are great for learning a lot about how the internals work and/or optimize a few things, while others just quietly get out of the way and let you work on your computer (Debian and derivatives, Red Hat). So either you will spend a lot of time learning about Linux, or you won’t, it is your choice. But neither choice will help you get better at photography or post-processing.
I would suggest that you just pick a decent Linux distro of the get-work-done mindset (Ubuntu or similar come to mind, super-easy to install, large user base), tweak it to your satisfaction, and then move on to things that are actually interesting. Eg photography.
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Well, for some of us Linux IS actually interesting! 
At least as much as photography. But only as long as it’s not done professionally. Been there, done that, NEVER again. And not because it’s Linux, but because it’s sysadmin…
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You make a valid point, but my impression is that the internals of Linux are not especially interesting to @Brian_Innes, hence my suggestion.
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True, I was just making a general point… Actually more of a specific point re: myself.
Yes, to me a Linux distro is just a tool to run my software.
At the moment I’m running KDE Neon, but I’m probably dropping back to Kubuntu 22.04 LTS. Nothing wrong with Neon per se, but apart from too many updates to KDE
Why is that a problem? At least on Ubuntu they are pretty much automatic, you can do them in the background (and restart occasionally when needed).
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Before my current system, I ran Xubuntu for several years. It’s GTK, not Qt, but seemed to offer the best combination (IMO) of user configurability without an overbearing UI like Unity. Before that I was a KDE user (KDE1, 2, 3) years ago, but it seemed to feel a bit too much like Windows 8 at one point. Fortunately that’s past but I got used to Xfce and never moved back.
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Thanks for the explanation. I am using the 525er nvidia-driver that is recommended by Ubuntu and I think it works fine. In addition I found some hints why (most likely) tools such as i8k to control fans on Dell systems are not working: secure boot. So I need to rely on the Bios to do that job. Maybe I should just use the laptop to develop some images instead of worrying about ;).
My main views on OS-ing around are posted earlier. One thing I feel compelled to add is growing concern with what I’ll so-call “beneficial evolution”. Example, most recent Ubuntu decided to encrypt my home directory. There may have been a dialog box on that, don’t remember. Now, when I reboot that machine in the basement I have to take a walk down there to log in so I can see my network drives on the tablet upstairs. I find all sorts of band-aid things to mitigate that, but I’d much rather just decrypt the directory. Yeah, great, my data is protected from whatever, but I feel I’ve got whatever corralled by other means.
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I think the main issue is too many massive updates when ever each incremental version of KDE is released. Not exactly ideal for use on a workstation.
Yeah, sometimes it’s a fine line between hand-holding and handcuffs. When I get in one of my hard-nosed moods, I tend to think software should do what it’s told, when it’s told, how it’s told and not unless it’s told. But that’s probably just me…
Yikes! If there was no option, that sort of heavy-handed “dictatorship” is beyond the pale, IMO. There’s a reason why Bitlocker never caught on, same basic situation. I’m sure I’ll be back on Linux at some point so I’ll have to research how to disable that.
You probably asked for it.
Depending on the kind of encryption you chose, you can just disable it.
You can just ask for security updates in the config.
You probably asked for it .
This is for volume encryption; I didn’t use LVM.
What I’m infected with is home directory encryption. The Slackware in me would just copy the home directory to a new place and move the hard link, but I don’t know (yet) what evil exists in the login scripts that would need to be placated…
That’s a bit unexpected, I thought it was removed from the installer a few years ago, and is no longer even offered in >=22.04 etc.
In any case, my experience with Linux is different from what I see from a few people in this topic. I manage around 8 boxes for family members. I install Ubuntu, and it just works without any major problems for years, with updates etc. I heard similarly good things about other distros, quite a few of them have been offering a decent user experience for years now. While of course tooling, focus and themes are different, there is no major difference between the user-oriented distributions in this respect.
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The only real downside is the problem Glenn had. In the end this can be “fixed” by having a dedicated server that deals with sharing files around, or by having the shared files in a disk/partition that’s not encrypted(although if your root is encrypted the issue still persists). Personally specially for laptops, usb drives and external disks I think encryption is mandatory. Too easy to get it stolen and then a random person has access to all your data. In the end it’s just an extra password at boot, not really bothersome considering the benefits.