The kid is 1.5 months old and you don’t have time? Once that kid gets mobile you’ll really not have time! And I don’t mean crawling or walking, I mean rolling and scooting.

When my kid figured out how to get places by rolling I had gotten up with her early on a Saturday morning and was letting my wife sleep in… I went to the basement and turned on the Xbox to pay some Rocket League and in the middle of a game she started to roll out of the room. I put the controller down and went to pick her up… 4 years later that controller was exactly where I had put it. She’s now almost 9 and is a great gaming partner, and is getting into robotics, 3D printing, and is interested in programming, so I get to jump right back into my old hobbies, and pick up some new ones.

All that to say, Linux is only going to get better and Windows will continue to get worse, but there’s more important things for you to have to worry about in the very near future than troubleshooting an OS that you’re not familiar with, stick with Win 10 for as long as you can and some day you’ll sit down at your desk and realize you have time to look back in at Linux and you’ll find that it isn’t nearly as difficult to use as you remember. Congratulations on the kid, it can be an incredible journey watching, and helping, a person emerge.

Just gonna add that Windows 11 Enterprise IoT Edition is Windows 11 without all the bloatware, and it’s easy to get it for free from the massgrave.

Your lack of time is the biggest issue, followed by your music needs (which are not impossible but I also know its not plug and play).

I would recommend going with win11 for simplicity and times sake. I would also recommend at least trying out ameliorated windows11. https://ameliorated.io/

Basically their stock run book makes the OS far more secure and private by setting up an admin account and then making your account a standard user (the way it should be done). Then it strips out all the bloat, restricts services, and installs open source alternatives like libre office and libre wolf. It also drastically changes the UI, which most of it I like and some is meh, but its all much better than the crap stock UI. I run this as a VM for all the stuff I still need windows for and I love it. Nothings ever going to make windows not windows, but this is pretty close and a simple click install. I highly recommend it.

I would say the biggest problem is the music production on Linux. Especially VSTs - those are still hit or miss. And unfortunately the DAWs you mentioned doesn’t have Linux support.

For example I was really trying to do music for several years on Linux, but in the end I gave up and now I’m dual booting Windows… 😿

No. Don’t do it.

You’re not experienced enough to install and maintain a Linux installation. Fuck those who says “Bite the bullet and just install Debian! It will never crash!” They won’t fix it for you when it does.

You don’t have anyone who’s supporting you physically. They are not a phone call away. They are ten forum replies away and won’t be there when you need them.

Windows 10 is no longer supported, but no one is forcing you to either uninstall or upgrade. You can keep running it if you don’t care about potential security problems.

Windows 11 is bad, but not as bad as you accidentally sudo removed /etc/fstab in Debian. Between bad and unusable, ask yourself which one you want less. This is assuming you spent your whole life using Windows and less likely make major mistakes.

You can schedule your migration to Linux in the future though. Just build a second machine. You must have the money to build a second one. Don’t fuck with your production build.

Your easiest way is to upgrade windows normally and if you dislike all it’s bloated software, just install Atlas OS on top of it. It’s just a software that will go through your windows and debloat it as much as possible. Simple as that. Easier done than reinstalling windows for an LTSC version. I personally have a dual boot with a win 11 with Atlas OS specifically for the software I can’t install on Linux.

bro just grab a cheap ssd and enclosure, install linux on that, slowly play around and setitup, if you like it eventually swap ssds or install it on your main one

Kick the can down the road and download the MASgrave Win10 script (I think that’s it, I don’t use windows) that puts you on the Long Term support - iirc that gives you until Jan 2027. That’s enough time to get through the zero parental sleep phase and be able to think clearly…

If that’s of interest I’ll dig the correct details out (ping me) or I’m sure someone else knows what I’m waffling about & will drop the link

Whatever you do, don’t switch to the react start menu OS.

Stay on win10 with an ltsc version, or don’t. Get a second SSD or your crotch goblins mom’s laptop that you install Fedora, LMDE or another “easy” distro on to experiment with. Either way, you are not in a rush. Win10 support ending is not as imminent.

Honestly, at 1.5 months it’s hard. Really hard. But once you get the pattern down and sleep schedule starts stabilizing, say 4-6 months in, it may be your most productive time when you know the kid is asleep for the next few hours.

This is how I’ve learned to solder and build mechanical keyboards during the first kid hitting that age# and ditched ms shit for Linux during the second. There’s always other challenges, but not having to deal with a user hostile OS reduces stress tremendously.

Really want an honest answer here and not a full blown Linux cult answer.

And so you ask in a linux community…

I would suggest installing Fedora Kinoite, poke around it for 20-30min and if you find it too confusing then just putting windows back.

My point is that it’s not a big decision/commitment. And it’s trivial to undo!

From what I’ve heard of seen in the Linux community music production on Linux is not easy. There is a fair amount of tweaking to get audio working and connecting instruments.

Tldr, I recommend sticking with Windows or using two separate machines, one for music production running Windows, the other for running everything else with Linux.

Music production isnt great on Linux in my experience at least right now. If you use any paid plugins that are windows only, there’s a good chance they won’t run. I haven’t used ableton or cakewalk but I use reaper which has a native Linux version, and even that had a lot of issues. Anything with ilok is a no go, even plugins that dont, I had a hard time getting working or if they did work, they crashed A LOT.

Gaming and other general use has been fine for me, ive even done video and photo editing on Linux and been happy with it.

If you want the easiest experience, I typically recommend Fedora KDE spin or kubuntu. KDE is a desktop environment that is very similar to windows and highly customizable. You’d likely feel at home on it. Immutable distro might also be a good option if you really want the “IDC just do the update” path. Harder to break, easier to manage from what ive heard but I haven’t used them personally so maybe others that have can chime in.

I made a windows only box for music production and use Linux on my main PC. It runs windows 10 and is rarely connected to the internet except when I need it to be. If you wanna run Linux and make music, it can be done, but I had a terrible time with it and have given up for now.

So make a separate machine for music production and run Linux on your main pc or just run Windows is my advice. So far, this has been the best setup for me. I don’t worry about my privacy, I can make music when I want, and I don’t have to worry about incompatible plugins, crashes, stupid nonsense that gets in my way when i wanna make music.

Go ahead and update to the newest spyware. 🤷‍♂️

Debian 13 comes out in a week or so. I have 1 fewer corporation spying on me.

Hey there! I’m an avid music producer and gamer.

I made the jump to bitwig while I was still using Windows in 2019, and made the full jump to Linux as my daily driver late last year.

My mint journey was Mint (Cinnamon) > Debian (KDE Plasma) > Garuda (Dr4g0niz3d KDE plasma)

I think mint was great and I was still able to do a fair amount of gaming on it and Cinnamon desktop environment is very similar to windows so it’s not too big of a jump.

Debian was fine - I wanted to use Plasma as the desktop environment because I wanted a touch customization for how I can set up windows, widgets, and different desktop panels. I had issues with some games on this though.7

I like Garuda but I would not recommend if you’re not too familiar with tinkering and troubleshooting. In hindsight I probably should have gone with Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE plasma as its desktop environment). I have experienced some odd bugs with the desktop environment and I think it has to do with how nvidia and Wayland play with one another.

I haven’t had a game that didn’t run, the only odd bug I’ve had is some games won’t recognize my new soundcard from bitwig.

using WINE and yabridge I’ve gotten all my plugins to work seamlessly as well - and that includes Omnisphere which is a beast on resources.

I was really fed up with the direction that windows has been heading for quite sometime.

TL;DR: I think mint or some Ubuntu distro would be a good fit for right now, and any future GPU upgrades consider something from AMD.