I'm not sure which distro would work with your laptop. I would suggest experimenting with live USB images. Maybe using something like Ventoy which enables you to try out multiple live images from one USB stick. But as far as applications go:

• GIMP is native to Linux and should work fine. You might also want to give Krita and Inkscape a whirl. Also, massive props for ditching Adobe. I hate that company as much as it hates their customers.
• Blender works on linux.
• So does Davinci. Allegedly. Haven't used it, but their website says Linux support is available.
• I don't code so, um, no idea. Sorry. Hopefully someone else will weigh in.
• Good news, Linux has working file explorers!
• No ads, at least for the most part. Ubuntu had Amazon's search integrated into their search bar a while back, which caused quite a kerfuffle. Later, they added a toggle to turn this off, but this was years ago. Might want to check just in case.

Linux Mint if you're unsure

Fedora if you're brave and want the full Toolbox

Please not Ubuntu. It has enough of its own issues that it originally turned me away from Linux.

Oh and KDE for the desktop environment if you want great out of box windows like UI if you go with Fedora. Mint comes with cinnamon which is also pretty good. xfce if you want to run linux on a potato.

The NVIDIA proprietary driver recently got decent update, but not all necessary changes might be in distros just yet. It should be pretty complete ootb experience in a month or two. My advice is to use something recent, like Fedora or Arch{,-based} for the easiest time with NVIDIA.

Affinity and Corel don’t have Linux ports (like most big commercial productive apps sadly), and running them with Wine might be possible but can bring mixed results, see https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=18332 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=5321 Canva seem to be available and they distribute it via AppImage. Gimp is native and trivial to install on most distros, or even bundled by default. If you want to try Windows software with Wine, use Bottles.

Blender is native and available in any Linux repo as it’s FOSS app. Rhino 3D looks like possible to run with Wine…

Linux version of Davinci Resolve is available, but it’s famous for being a bit of a pain to install and being slightly limited with some codecs/functionality missing.

You should be fine with coding unless you wanted something like .NET and full blown VisualStudio. VS Code is ok.

There’s wide range of file explorers on Linux, and since it’s rather good idea to stick to whatever is default for your desktop (For instance Dolphin on KDE) you can even change the default to something else if you don’t like it.

It would be actually hard to get something with embedded ads on Linux desktop. Canonical tried with their Amazon „integrations” in Ubuntu like 12 years ago, and boy did they regret…

KDE Neon is a fantastic choice for those coming from Windows. https://neon.kde.org/

The most obvious difference for the end-user compared to Windows is that you can choose different desktop environments, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXQt, Mate or Cinnamon to name the most prominent among others. As you are used to the look-and-feel of Windows, I'd suggest giving KDE a try.

For a beginner, I'd recommend using a 'beginner friendly' distribution such as Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) or Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu using Mate/Cinnamon DE). Fedora, Linux Mint Debian Edition or plain Debian are also suitable, but for a more experienced user.

For graphics stuff you will be using Gimp, Inkscape, and Krita. No adjustment layers, or cmyk, sorry. If that is enough for you, good, if not, you're out of luck.

For 3D modelling, only Blender.

For video, DaVinci only works sometimes, depending on distro, version of the app, drivers installed etc. It's a bit of a crapshoot. A good alternative is kdenlive if you don't need hardware acceleration, proper color grading and film emulation, or compositing.

Google laid off most Dart/Flutter developers just a week ago or so.

Thunar for file manager, not Nautilus. Nautilus crashes in folders that has hundreds of svg files in it (e.g. a theme folder), or when you're trying to copy a 30 gb folder to a new folder on the same secondary drive (it only copied 9 GB out of the 30, all files were owned by me). Both bugs bit me just the other day.

Take something user-friendly, like Linux Mint, or Fedora.

I'm going to toss in another recommendation for Linux Mint. The interface is very similar to classic Windows and it has a large user base so it shouldn't be hard to find instructions online if you get stuck. Software-wise, Linux Mint 21.3 is entirely compatible with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Use the default Cinnamon version.

Coming from Windows, the only other very important non-obvious thing is that you should look for software on the app store application first instead of downloading packages from the Internet. Unlike the Microsoft Store, Linux app stores are often connected to a variety of software sources, and they will also update your software to the latest versions automatically whenever you download system updates. Almost all of the software you mentioned can be found in the app store. It's very convenient!

I would say to just try it out and see how it is! The live USB works nicely and you can decide you don't like a distro and move on rapidly. There are also tools out there that let you load up multiple distros on the USB at once, and then pick which one to use when you boot up.

I went through my own struggles with dual booting Linux some time ago. If you search on Lemmy, you can find those embarrassing posts. It was my fault, I got confident and messed with 'grub' in all the wrong ways, before cutting my losses early and reverting everything because I had other commitments to deal with.

The good thing though is that it's totally possible to put Windows back 100% the way it was before, even after messing up as badly as I did (I couldn't boot into either operating system because the machine couldn't find the boot entry). Once you're ready to replace windows with Linux (or dual boot etc.), make a good backup with something like Macrium Reflect and you should be safe to go for it. I highly doubt you'll make the mistakes I did, the story is to say that you can mess up and be just fine!

As for your use case:

• affinity programs aren't on Linux from what I remember, you might want to experiment and see if you can run it with Wine or if you have an alternative (ex. Dual boot, different programs)
• Not sure about Davinci, comments suggest that it runs ok on Linux. I like KdenLive

As for what people recommended, and what I'm planning to try soon

• Kubuntu (if you want Ubuntu that looks similar to windows)
• Fedora (what I tried last time)
• Linux Mint

No-one has commented on your mentioning VS and Flutter... I haven't used it but I think VS is available for Linux?

I contribute to the Thunder client for Lemmy from my system running EndeavourOS with KDE.

I personally use android studio for this. I hit a pitfall on installing the android, flutter and dart SDKs from the AUR, but that turned out to be the lesser method. It was much easier to just let android studio install them to a folder, and thereby have it manage their versions.

The one downside was having to add their folders to PATH, so terminal commands like adb, dart, emulator, flutter, etc. work, but that's not a big deal.

Linux Mint although X may not work with touch screens.

The other option is Fedora Workstation but you will need to update to the latest release every 6 months as it ships brand new packages.

Btw for running Davinci resolve try this project

It is not exactly tested but allows to pack the software into a container, making sure it works forever if it works.

OK, let me fill you with my experience. Now I am on Desktop Linux, and I can't say how your Double Touch screens will work. But I can tell you about some of your points.

Affinity, canva, corel, and cinema4d are not Linux compatible and you'll need to run them in Wine/Wine GE via software like Bottles or Lutris. Most will not work, while others like affinity might work, but requires a lot of working around. If these software's are required, you may want to look at a Mac.

keyshot, gimp, vscode(ium) are all native and have either scripts or can be installed via Flatpak or from the distros app repos.

Davinci Resolve is interesting, You've lucked out since you have an rtx2060, but Resolve is quite finicky to get working Linux. You'll need nvidia drivers and the open source free drivers will not work. All good Linux distros should have easy access, but I found Fedora to be trickier to install. Once you can get Resolve working, you'll either need to buy Studio if you want H.264 support, and if your videos aren't using PCM audio then you'll need to convert it using FFMPEG. I have a script which I use at the end of my injest. Afterwords, it runs and works fine, with no issues (assuming you have the RAM to run it 32GB recommended). If you don't want to deal with any of this (understandable) Mac OS has no issues out of the box.

Working file explorer: up to taste, and personal preference. Every distro will have one and it'll be good enough, but some distros tailor theirs to their OS's tastes. If you are running with a popular Desktop Environment, i.e. KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, then it'll work.

Now if you want my two cents on all of this. First you should aim for a Ubuntu based distro. While Ubuntu itself isn't bad, I personally prefer a different Desktop Environment as Gnome is too different for me from what Windows offers. Linux Mint with Cinnamon and POP_OS are good alternative with a more Windows/Mac flavoring, and since they are running Gnome underneath it'll have the same compatibility as Ubuntu proper with hardware.

Another option is Kubuntu which used KDE's Plasma. Plasma is OK, but I find it to be a little less refined than it's appearance lead me to believe.

Now for testing, I'd advise you to get a second SSD and an enclosure and plug it into a USB-C port. It'll do wonders to quickly go an run everything, without sacrificing you existing install of Winblows. Linux is so efficent I ran my main PC for a week off of it, and only noticed while running games.

Finally, depending on how often you are using your Windows only software. You might get away with running them in a Windows 10 VM, and using a shared folder to the Host machine to move files back and forth.

This is definatly a project you should look into, but I feel you should probably look at more cross platform alternatives to your software first. Since another alternative, if you aren't playing games, is a Mac.

as for video editing, i've been using flowblade recently, it's been pretty good for putting together more basic edits.

You should install it using flatpak and only update when you have no more active projects (for the moment it seems updates partially break older saves)

pcmanfm has been pretty solid, i really recommend learning CLI file management though, it's universal and super convenient for the basic things.