I assume you are right. So then I ask myself, for my own occasional use, would a standalone version of Photoshop from 2015 cover my needs?
Yeah, I think it would!
I was always a much heavier user of Lightroom than Photoshop anyway. I still need to choose between the FOSS options there.
Linux Mint is probably the perfect educational OS to switch to like that. I’m assuming most people are coming from Windows, are mouse+gui only, and are not used to being their own admin and installing all the basics like Firefox and libreoffice.
But it’s still Linux, so the user friendliness doesn’t mean you are locked out from going on tech or customization deep dives. Daily terminal user here, still love me some mint.