I've been using Linux for over 2 decades, including having Linux boxes in my room But if I'm not going to upgrade to W11 for fear it'll break my creative tools and the plugins I have set up with them that I constantly use... I'm not going to switch to Linux which can't run them at all

Fair. The way I did it tho was moved slowly over as I found Foss/Linux compatible alternatives. But you do you.

Every damn day I wish there were decent alternatives to the creative tools I use but there's just... not really. If you're doing pen based stuff and have like a Surface, or an iPad there's some great tools but desktop with mouse/stylus in Windows the tools I got are still among the very best

Krita?

I looked it up, it's well regarded for hobbyists but apparently it's not at the same level as photoshop

It's a great art app. For a Photoshop equivalent, I use gimp rather than krita.

Since Adobe brought in subscriptions ugh, it all just sucks so much. You can't own anything, you gotta rent it, and it just gets worse each iteration now Microsoft even floated the concept of making Windows subscription based, paying a monthly fee to turn your computer on and have the OS work WTF