Thanks man, this is a great answer, I guess Ill have to give it a go. I love to use hard to find art software to and mosh it all together, so that's always been the big hold up with linux for me, plus win11 ltsc iot is pretty awesome, it didn't even come with the snipping tool, much less ai, but I know eventually I need to switch. I did recently set up an openmediavault server, which was at times frustrating (due to what turned out to be a bad external hdd case..), but also rewarding. It's been running really well ever since.
manjaro kde was awesome last time I tried it, so Ill prolly give that a go again.
Thanks again!