Proton[1] is the reason my next machine will be Linux.
The recent Gnome experience on hardware half a decade older than the Surface laptop is so much snappier than Windows. I dred MacOS and Windows updates these days but I'm generally very pleased with updates to Ubuntu/Gnome.
Furthermore everything just works, too, which is what I grew up to expect from Windows, but literally yesterday the Surface laptop bricked itself installing an update. I have daily problems using Windows with WSL, too. It's infuriating.
I used to feel stable and assured using Windows, but these days Windows is an endless labyrinth of dialog boxes, it's hard to comprehend how anyone could take it seriously any longer. Maybe I'm getting old.
In stark contrast with Windows 10 which has had features like window snapping at edges when dragging something across the boundary between monitors that you just can't turn off. Or updates that seem to obey their own arcane rules instead of requiring a simple sudo [package-manager] [update-command]
It's almost as pretty as my MBP, and vastly more usable than Windows. And I have everything I really need (with first class Linux support):
* Gaming - Steam + Proton
* Digital Audio Workstation - Bitwig
* Video Editing - DaVinci Resolve
* 3d Modeling - Blender
* 2d Image - Gimp (this one could be a lot better)
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The only thing I can imagine dual booting into Windows for is Oculus Link. But I don't really think it's worth it.
If someone could guarantee rock solid stability, I *might be willing to switch, even though I'm fairly invested in the Ableton / VST world. 10 years of projects will likely force me to always run mac / windows unless Ableton decides to build for linux in the future. Who knows, maybe ARM will force their hand.
That being said, Bitwig does support Jack, so routing should be pretty open ended.
And there's this linux project (https://pipewire.org/) that's been doing really, really well. It (sorta) combines all the different audio servers into one.
There is an amazing (IMSO) producer duo, highly recommend their liveset from Glastonbury, called Booka Shade. They produced a chart topping pop act on PowerMacs (G4 IIRC), which were allready ancient back then.
What's going to be hilarious is that much like dosbox became the best way to run old dos programs even if they might still technically run on windows, wine/proton will be (and sometimes already is) the best way to run many older windows programs. Particularly I'm in love with proton's fullscreen magic that doesn't actually mess with your display mode, so e.g. I can run Touhou games fullscreen in proton with my display at 4k despite them only supporting 480p fullscreen -- running on Windows will try to set my display mode to that with varying success. At some point we'll be running old Windows programs on Windows with wine/proton through WSL.