You will have to reinstall the OS, and redo the partition table (256 MB boot partition (that’s enough for a single OS), 2 GB swap, and the rest / root partition). Then install Debian with XFce on the / partition. You use it normally as with any other Debian-based OS, that Zorin is also one of them, but you use the terminal to update the system. It’s very usable.

For 16 GB SSD with 4 GBs of RAM (which is what most Chromebooks used to be), you will need Debian with XFce, with 2 GB of swap partition. Nothing else will either fit, or work properly. I have given away 3 such laptops to friends with that setup (Arch might fit ok too, but because I was giving it to friends, Debian was easier to work with). After installing the v12 Bookworm Debian OS, with libreoffice, a couple of simple games (e.g. solitaire), Gimp, and that 2 gb swap partition, I was left with 5 GB free space. I had to occasionally do sudo apt autoremove to make sure the space wasn’t eaten away, but overall, it stayed steady (dh -h will give you that info). With Trixie, you might end up with 4 GBs of free space, as it’s bigger. Bookworm has updates until 2029.

If the issue is under X11, try their Wayland session. Otherwise, you will have to wait until December, when they go fully Wayland with their more stable version. If you’re already using Wayland, use X11. I don;'t think there’s much to do otherwise for such an issue.

Anything from Debian. I even run Debian-Testing, and it’s rock solid. Also, Linux mint, on my other partition.

Only thing bothering me on the cosmic desktop is really the fact that the app menu doesn’t have a shadow behind its window. So white menu on white window on the back, you can’t see where one window starts and where the other ends. A patch for that would be great, to be honest.

You are the only one with the answer closer to what I’m looking for, everyone else is thinking in terms of user accounts, where root can override. An encrypted volume can not be unlocked by root without having the password of the said volume.

Linux user since 1998 or 99. Debian-Testing for my desktops, Mint for my laptops. I like things that work well with a GUI (I dislike the terminal, despite being well familiar with it), without bad surprises (Debian-Testing is surprisingly stable).

VMs won’t do for long, because you won’t have proper acceleration as it’s required by gfx apps like Lightroom. Sure, they’ll work, but you’ll experience slowdowns. You can run accelerated VMs, but I find them buggy.

If you’re going to dual boot, you should install Linux on a separate DRIVE, not just a partition, and install the bootloader on that second drive. You force Linux to do that by disabling in the BIOS the Windows drive first, before installation. Then, you re-enable it again. Then you can choose what to boot at using F12 during boot time. If you put them on the same drive, Windows will eventually overwrite the bootloader.

The ideal thing is to actually move to Darktable. https://mathiashueber.com/migrate-from-lightroom-to-open-source-alternative/

You don’t really need a fast laptop for this, anything that goes over 10000 points on the Passmark CPU test, is enough (and with an integrated Intel cpu, if you want the best support for video codecs).

In Europe, the cheapest way is to get a DELL that comes with Linux. They’re 99.9% compatible, with firmware updates supported via fwupd on linux, the only thing is hit or miss is palm rejection on the touchpad. Everything else works. In Greece these start at 600 euros with 16 GB of RAM, 750 euros for 32 GB of RAM. I bought one myself recently, with an intel cpu at 15k points on passmark. Plenty fast. Only thing that doesn’t work accelerated is Blender (it works in cpu mode only), as it requires non-integrated GPUs. Resolve works now with intel gpus on linux too, and so is kdenlive.

ARM was bought by the Japanese, it’s no longer European. RISC-V is the future.