The main image editor most people will recommend is GIMP, but depending on what type of image editing you’re doing, Krita might be better. They’re both available for Windows, so you can install them now and try them before you switch :)

GIMP is more like Photoshop, and can be made to look more like it with the PhotoGimp extention. Krita is more for digital drawing, but can be used for some photo editing too :)

For best out of the box experience you may want to try Bazzite (https://bazzite.gg/), it will have pretty much everything included for gaming, except Microsoft Store as noted above. This system is harder to break by doing something stupid and has good documentation on their website.

Alternatively you may try a more traditional “batteries included” distribution like Ultramarine Linux or Linux Mint.

OpenOffice has more or less been dead for a while. Check out LibreOffice, its spiritual successor, or OnlyOffice (which people have opinions about because it’s Russian developed [I think the guy is actually Latvian]).

Also, my vote is for Bazzite. Gaming based and works out of the box with constant updates as long as you restart your computer with easy rollback if something goes wrong. Hard to break your computer, but if you like tinkering it’ll have to be containerized.

Desktop is an important choice for look and feel so check out the difference between GNOME and KDE the two main variants.

Chiming in to emphasize that the biggest deal to you probably will be the desktop environment, not the underlying distro. Given your stated requirements, most distros could work.

Step 1) Find a Distro which you are comfortable with using. Over the years I’ve tried Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch, and I’ve settled on Linux Mint since it’s familiar to me, but also easy to use and lots of forums with trouble shooting since it’s based on Ubuntu/Debian. Arch is my close second if you want the bleeding edge and are OK with stability.

Step 2) Find the right UI. Most distro’s default desktop environments are good, but I found Cinnamon and KDE Plasma to be perfect for me. If you are looking for a more Mac like experience Gnome is a good starting point too. Though you can customize any distro to look like any OS with enough time and effort.

Step 3) Software.

Games is a solved problem these days. Steam works natively and Proton is good enough for lie 99% of your games. You just need to enable it and you will be good to go. If you are playing non steam games, Heroic is a simple application which works, though if you are installing anything more complicated, i.e. a CD game Lutris is your friend. Not sure about gamepass as the Microsoft store is Windows exclusive.

Office Software: LibreOffice is installed by default on all OS’s and is based off of OpenOffice, but it’s actually still in development.

Photoshop: Yeah this is going to be your make or break it situation. Photoshop has no real substitute in linux. GIMP isn’t bad, but is only good for image manipulation not creation. Kirta is more of an art studio rather than Photoshop. What I personally do is a lot of work. Affinity Photo is a close second place for Photoshop but it’s Mac/Windows only. Good News, with Proton you can run it. Bad News it’s a pain in the rear to do so. I strongly suggest Bottles and the ElementalWarrior build of Wine to get it working there are some guides on how to do it. But again it’s a pain in the rear.

In some regards how I get around Windows Limitation is just have a virtual machine with windows on it to run when I need it. Doesn’t need much power and I use it when I need it. I…e backing up my iPhone or sending music files to it.

1. Opensuse, or Fedora/Bazzite.
2. Steam for steam, Heroic for the Rest.
3. Gimp/Krita
4. Spotify, discord, etc is just a Web app, but I recommend Freetube
5. Mullvad as VPN.