Your once again though saying "I tried it for a short time, got frustrated and gave up". You didn't learn Windows overnight. Why would you expect to learn Linux overnight?

You also just need to learn some basic commands first then you never have to "trust someone's commands". There is this magic command "man" all you have to do is type "man ______" filling in the blank with whatever command you want to know about. Suddenly you have the manual. After a few times of following a tutorial and using "man" on ever new command you see you suddenly will find you know what your doing.

The other option is to just stick to what is in repositories or comes with packaged installers. At least till your comfortable. I know you can't tell me during your "over 30 fucking years" of using other systems you never had an install blow up in your face. Tossing out Linux because of one failed install is bit silly.

Finding a replacement doesn't necessarily mean you will find an exact port of something. Half your list is games, there are now LOTS of good games that run on Linux. If you look around you can find games like those on your list.

The business software you would have to look and see what you can find. I don't know your use case for Stone Edge so kind of hard for me to find a drop in replacement.

Photoshop can probably be replaced with GIMP. This again would require some learning and probably some plugins to get all the features you need.

Adobe Animate can be replaced by a number of animation tools. Again you would have to find best for your use case.

In the end though I am too lazy to do all your homework for you. I did find replacements for each application but then comes trying to find if they have the exact features you want. You also if for some reason you can't live with out certain software can often run it in WINE. The very worst case you use virtualbox and run a VM for that program.

Spend just a little time learning Linux and you will find you don't need Windows. I really don't get it, people's main complaint against Linux is it is hard to use or doesn't run what they want. The "hard to use" is just that you need to learn a little bit. Once you get used to it Linux is no more difficult than Windows. The "doesn't run ____" is fixed by spending a little time looking at Linux software till you find a replacement. Sure, you don't some proprietary software, on the other hand you normally get something open source that does the same thing and is free. Then also you get an OS that listens to you and respects your rights. No recording everything you do, no installing apps without asking, and no "You busy? Too bad I am rebooting right NOW."

We didn't know about the stealth helicopter the USA had until we failed to blow it up after crashing one going after Osama. So there is proof of aircraft the general population doesn't know about. Then we recently had a guy use a fighter jet to draw a penis in the sky..... So what are the odds that the people testing these top secret aircraft are not sometimes goofing off and buzzing farm houses and drawing crop circles for the fun of it? I mean really, anyone going to honestly try and say they wouldn't do that? It just seems like far too much fun to pass up on.

Your question might seem easy at first, but it really does depend on who your trying to stop. You moving to a dorm and want to stop average joe from messing with you? Full disk encryption with a strong password would have you fairly well covered. You expecting the NSA is going to come after you? Then your probably screwed. Brute force attacks against strong encryption are not practical for the average person. If you choose a good long password then no one short of government agencies are going to have the processing power to crack it. Even then, you would have to give that agency a good reason to waste that kind of power on you. If your really worried though why don't you just carry it with you at all times? If you have a desktop you can get a hot swap bay for your hard disk. When you leave you power down the computer and take the hard drive with you.