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!
In terms of hardware I suggest AMD and never nivdia…
Do your homework on WiFi drivers and Linux installation first if you plan on installing over WiFi.
GIMP is great for photo editing on Linux.
Check if any other apps you can’t live without have a suitable substitution or can run efficiently and easily with WINE.
Ubuntu snap is a mess, look it up.
Read the wiki of your chosen distro if you have problems or get stuck before asking technical questions, 9/10 times the answer is there.