How to Migrate from macOS to Linux While Keeping All Your Creative Workflows

From Mac to Linux without Losing Your Mind (or Projects)

I moved my design studio from macOS to Linux last winter. One month later? Zero regrets.
Here’s the exact playbook I wish I’d had before I started.

Step 1: Take Inventory—Write It Down

Grab a coffee, open a text doc and list everything you touch in a week.
Not just big apps—shortcuts, plug-ins, fonts, even that weird Finder toolbar you added in 2019.

My list looked like:

• Adobe CC (Photoshop 2024, After Effects 2024)
• Suitcase Fusion—3,200 fonts
• Final Cut Pro – 200 GB of templates
• Automator batch-renamer script (runs daily)

That five-minute audit saved me days of surprise breakage later.

Step 2: Pick a Linux Flavor That Likes Creatives

Three distros I tested on real hardware (not in a VM):

• Ubuntu Studio – audio apps pre-installed, JACK tuned out of the box
• Fedora Workstation – newest packages via Flatpak, no PPAs needed
• Pop!_OS – NVIDIA graphics click-and-go, great HiDPI scaling

Honest answer? I landed on Pop!_OS because my RTX 4070 woke up with one checkbox ticked. No driver gymnastics.

Step 3: Swap Each Tool Before You Erase macOS

Design & Photo

GIMP for pixel work. Missing CMYK? Install the separate+ plug-in.
Krita wins for drawing tablets—pressure curve felt better than Photoshop on day one.
Darktable ate my Lightroom catalog like breakfast.

Video

DaVinci Resolve runs natively on Linux, but you must:

• Install proprietary NVIDIA drivers version 550+
• Grab the OpenCL runtime from AMD ROCm (even for NVIDIA GPUs—which feels odd, but works)

If your edits are quick-and-dirty, Kdenlive opens faster than a Chrome tab.

Audio

Ardour replaced Logic Pro for me. The scary part? Setting up JACK.
Good news: Ubuntu Studio does it for you.

Step 4: Ghost-ride the Data

I sync via Nextcloud, but external drives work too. Format the drive exFAT so macOS and Linux both smile at it.

Fonts:

sudo apt install fonts-firacode fonts-apple-color-emoji

Copy your custom TTFs to ~/.local/share/fonts, then rebuild the cache:

fc-cache -fv

Color profiles: Drop your ICC files in /usr/share/color/icc and reboot.

Step 5: Make It Look like Your Desk

Install Plank dock and the WhiteSur theme; ten minutes later you get a pixel-perfect Mac-ish dock.
Add Ulauncher for Spotlight-style file search, assign the old ⌘-space shortcut. Muscle memory intact.

Step 6: Check Your Toys

Three quick tests I ran first:

• Wacom Intuos Pro – worked out of the box (pop-up menu buttons included)
• Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 – recognized as soon as JACK started
• Logitech MX Master 3 – install Solaar for side scroll and macros

If something fails, chances are the forum thread is older than your laptop.

Step 7: Keep a Safety Net

Dual-boot for two weeks. I did. Then one Tuesday I opened macOS just to retrieve a password and realized I hadn’t booted it for 9 days.

Boom—gformated that partition. Never looked back.

Last Word: The Community Has Your Back

Stuck? These channels reply faster than AppleCare:

• Linux Audio Discord
• Krita Artists forum
• Pop!_OS GitHub tracker

Back up first, test second, breathe third. Linux isn’t scary—it just wants you to ask before it breaks your toys.