In terms of hardware, what are some good cost effective resources and what what things might I want to consider differently than what I am used to in both the Mac and Windows worlds? I need smart home management, a plex hub, and photo editing, as well as the usual other stuff.
EDIT: I use Capture One for photo organizing and editing. I have old computers I can repurpose for this endeavor, but they are pretty old. My main thought for this post was looking into what kind of hardware I could consider for building a new Linux system from scratch. I am very much am inclined to switch to Home Assistant,because Siri is dumb as a bag of rocks, and AppleHome does not have the features I want and is extremely buggy. Everything I have currently is in the Apple ecosystem, and my daily driver is an M2 Mac Mini. I am not inclined to put Linux on the Mac Mini at this stage. I use the complete Proton suite for all that stuff. Thanks!
You can just try it out and see how it works for you.
Boot up from the USB and see how things work.
You can even setup a dual boot that lets you choose what system you want to boot into when you turn on your pc.
For me, getting away from windows that got more and more spammy and filled with bloatware was fantastic! I am currently only having some small issues with adding drives to steam and the sound, soundim?ng a bit muffled. But i am only 2 days in still