MacMacMac I stayed away from Linux because it's not a desktop OS. It's a fine server, but the desktop suffers because it lacks the three decades of UI tuning that has made for improvement in Windows and Mac.
Actually the UI of Linux is fantastic and very well done, way above Mac or Windows in my opinion (especially the "old" Gnome now called Mate, IMHO, but also the other GUI options aren't that below). Of course it is different than Windows or Mac, so you will feel lost at first, like when going to a new town. But if you take the effort to explore it and learn it, you'll like it better in my experience. For example, the way that multi-desktop is implemented in Linux Mate is WAY better, more convenient and more flexible than the way it is implemented in Mac (not even worth mentioning Windows for that 😁)
The real problem with Linux is the lack of some software, for example Kontakt, Microsoft Office and Finale are not available. Lucky you PianoTeq is 😆
So check what kind of software you can't live without (e.g. VLC and Audacity work natively on Linux), what is nice to have but you have alternatives (e.g. you may be fine with Libre Office and Musescore) and what you simply can leave behind (you have some Kontakt replacements, but not for everything you might want to use it for). If you end up with something that sounds 🎵 reasonable, jump for it. You can dual boot or use a VM to have both OSes, and from a pure Software Engineering point of view they work just fine (besides for some audio driver ☹️) but in my experience it's the human factor that matters most. For that factor, it's much better if you just use one UI (rather than switching back and forth), at least until you are very familiar with Linux.
In the lists above, I see that are a couple of tools for loading VST2 and VST3 windows plugin in linux.
So, is it possible to load Kontakt and garritan or VSL on Reaper, for example? How? Apart from the VST.dll to communicate with the DAW, you don't need the actual engine (Kontakt, Garritan, VSL) running on the background? How can it run if it is not supported? Through an emulator? On a separate machine? I don't understand…
I believe you can do at least part of that via Fluidsynth (which I use mostly in Android). Before bothering with trying them on Linux, I tried most of these stuff on Mac and I hated the sound of all of them, so I did not bother to install them on Linux. I think the ones that have serious copy protection will not work.
The stuff that https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/ provides will work fine. Happy to discuss this more but please in a separate thread: feel free to create one and @ - mention me.
Should we now bring this thread back to the Yamahas? How does the P-515 sound compare to the NU1 ?