i realized this is useful cus i saw one of these from @goaty just now. uhh disclaimer i was never a windows user, i had a short windows phase in my teens cus i got really into a couple games i could only play on windows at the time. this is no longer the case. i use debian currently on main production computer
extra disclaimer i also hate desktop linux and would rather be dailying haiku. if you're looking to switch OSes and rely on your computer, haiku is not currently a good idea to daily, but i really wish i didnt have to say that. i really really wish i didnt have to say that ;-;
firefox as web browser. dont install chrome there's a pretty big list of good reasons for this but i am currently hung over so bing it idc
DAW: i use renoise as my primary DAW and ardour as a recording/mixing only DAW. if you use pianorolls i dont know a good DAW for you over here sorry, a lot of stuff works in the various wine-based things but anything which uses ilok DRM is going to be... experimental. look, ive gotten ilok-protected plugins working ONCE and judging by what i was able to find online, i forgot to tell anyone because barely anyone seems to even know it's possible. i wish i could remember how i did it man, it probably involved some crap with hyper-specific wine versions and using my DAW in wine instead of using linvstx, who knows. fuck man i own like 5 plugins that require ilok man. i havent used them in 6 years. if it's an ilok-protected DAW forget it, pirate that software you already own baybie
system audio: this is probably going to piss off some of the recent elitists who've shown up in the linux pro audio scene, especially because i have to tell you NOT to use a certain piece of software frequently recommended. anyways for my primary system audio, i use JACK, with pulseaudio set up as a guest. this is typically finnicky if you use qjackctl, the solution is that people should've stopped recommending qjackctl back in 2015. use cadence. on anything debian-based, you can quickly get it set up by adding the kxstudio repos. i dont use pipewire because i have a piece of hardware pipewire doesn't play nice with yet, and i dont like the global graph (pulseaudio software never needs multirouting stop putting pulseaudio stuff all on the same graph as my work software!!!!! very difficult to read the routing graph like this). if your interface is a fairly standard usb interface, pipewire will probably work fine. if you are using onboard audio for pro sound... yeah don't even try jack. it's not hard it's just, just barely hard enough when you're using the nightmare hardware that i cannot recommend it because i dont wanna help. pipewire is intended to replace JACK and, for these systems, it does perfectly fine. your OS will probably ship with pipewire already set up as the way of doing sound. in fact, if you aren't using weird hardware and read all of this paragraph expecting it to be helpful, sorry. buy some albums i need to pay for drugs and/or rehab
games: steam. lutris is helpful for games, but i havent run into any need for it FOR GAMES in a while. i mostly use lutris to run non-videogame windows software tbh... if you want to know if a game you like will run fine with proton (the thing built in to steam to play windows games), just look up its name on protondb. most games will work well, some will be on parity with windows in every way, and some (read: old games) will run far better than they ever will on modern windows. hey, you could try out that old video game in your steam library that you could never play because it needs a community patch to run on windows 10! it'll probably be worth it.
listening to music: ok so this one is actually fun because most distros will pre-install a pretty good media player with their main DEs. cool, right? yeah. i personally use deadbeef because i am like... much older than i actually am, and it's somewhat nostalgic to use software developed by like one person that's unable to keep the thing fully up-to-date in their spare time and has a minimalistic UI and demoscene plugins built-in. i love listening to like 5 XMs and then the playlist transitions into the latest wormrot album, then bam after that i am listening to magical tetris challenge. it feeds me
video editing: blender. blender has video editing functions. people recommend kdenlive a lot, i hate using kdenlive with the passion of like... a million millionths of myself. idk. anyways i fuckin hate video editing and kdenlive made me want to hammer smashed face myself. video editing in blender, though? it dulls to a numb distrust. the truce is uneasy, but exist it does. disclaimer: i just spent an entire paragraph not addressing the fact that i use renoise as my primary recording DAW and only bust out ardour for that when im being lazy and want to not have a metronome, so my tastes in software are eccentric and distrustable. i will still shill editing videos in blender tho
desktop environment: this will be controversial. i use kde plasma. why? consistent & usable out-of-box experience that's not... mind-numbingly terrible, and is based around mouse users rather than keyboard-onlyists or pen input users. hell, it's pretty alright for pen input. i know because i have it on my laptop that i use with a pen too, it's nice. i dont have to worry about if some weird drama between two self-important keyboard warriors resulted in the spite-removal of something i relied on, unlike uhh... gnome 2, gnome 3, gnome 40, a bunch of others i dont want to mention directly cus their teams are small and im not actually sure that's why those features were removed and yknow i dont wanna just shit on em like that? if your computer is non-sterk i do not recommend kde plasma as it has the very funny problem of getting slower with every minor release version for the last 15 years (minimum).
text editor (for programming): idk fuck i just use whatever. sometimes it's geany sometimes it's kate. ive used nano to write code before. ive written code in the opencomputers port of edit. im a fuckin oldworld furfag bitch ill write code on the table if it'll work and it's funny to do so. i have written BASH on college-ruled paper. im the type of queer to have a career as a recording musician entirely as a front so that i can sell people cassettes where i just read off perl. you think im joking? call my bluff. do it. buy some albums. watch. you think im joking i will do it, i will work to amass the funds to be able to sell people an EP with 30 minutes of perl on the backside. anyways i recommend kate, geany, or vscode.