I started with Ubuntu probably like two weeks ago (my first distro) mainly because for some reason I didn't know that my CD drive wasn't working, and somehow it allowed me to install it (big mystery). I loved it because my computer started running faster immediately. I wasn't using as much CPU and Memory by doing normal things on my 4 year old laptop. I didn't like the way it was set up though. I wasn't able to find things easily, and was a little bit harder for me to get accustomed to since I was still used to how Windows 7 was set-up.
So I changed to Cinnamon Mint. I love it. I'll probably stay here for a long time. It runs faster than Ubuntu, the layout is familiar to me, and now I don't have to worry about running a whole mess of security programs in the background eating my CPU and Memory up. My laptop is only Dual core i3, and has 4GB of Memory, so it's not the quickest out there. But even if I got a quicker computer, which I will eventually for music production, I will stay with Linux. Love it.
I used Photoshop very mildly on my Windows OS, and Ableton Live (music production program) mainly. Gimp (which is not a photoshop replacement for professionals) replaced photoshop for me. It has all the functions I need that I used on Photoshop, which was mainly cropping, and adding backgrounds ect. Nothing too technical.
Ableton Live doesn't work with Linux either. But I found an alternative that works really really good, and has a lot of the same functionalities than Ableton Live. It's called BitWig Studio. It's pretty new, but its a direct competition with Ableton Live, and it runs on Linux. It saved the day, because I would of probably had to run Ableton Live on Wine, which idk if it works on it, since I haven't tried.
So far, so good. Not looking back to Windows anymore. Love Linux, and have become a Linux fan boy. I highly recommend it, that I even installed it on my brothers computer since he got a mean virus on his Windows OS. He's not very techy with computers, and hasn't really asked me any questions on how to use it. It's pretty straight forward, and I can tell he is satisfied with it. Plus that means I don't have to fix his computer anymore with ugly viruses. I tried believe me, but for some reason it didn't fix it.
Those who are satisfied with Windows, that's cool, but as for me Linux is great. I have the same functionality as I did on my Windows machine, and I feel like it has opened my eyes to a whole other flood of open sourced programs out there. There is definately alternatves to some window programs. Most people aren't photoshop profressionals, or Ableton Live users, although BitWig runs the same as Ableton Live to me. It's really high end stuff.