I’m trying to build a workstation for my wife who is a graphic design by trade. She has only ever used Window so I thought that this would be a great way to introduce her to Linux. I just have some questions about getting this project off the ground.
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Am I better off buying a cheap, prebuilt desktop and adding some extra parts like a GPU and more memory or building it from the ground up?
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For a distro, I was thinking about Linux Mint but would other distros be better options?
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Other than GIMP, what are some essential software for graphic design and digital art on Linux?
Before any of that: Let her try it out on your machine (assuming it can be used for this kind of workload) during business hours. She will run into problems (Software not working, something upstream at her workplace not working, …). If all of those are fixed or she deems them negligible, then you can start thinking of switching her over.
This can take over a year of time, depending on how frequent some work related tasks are.
Dualboot on the new machine can also be good alternative, if you don’t mind spending the money.
A “do or die” approach might lead to a very big fight about her not being important to you, or even respected by you, among other things.