Are you trying to get Wild West to write another book about linux on here?
Ask and you shall receive.
Arch and KDE Neon (huge KDE fan, but the only reason why I use this Ubuntu derivative is because it's easy to remove things that I don't like) user here, many computers, only one current Windows install in a VM and that's for cross compiling programs that I write (no relation to this, programs that I have for this endeavour are my own in house ones)
AFAIK, he's the only one with a linux daily driver around here, and even then I'm pretty sure he isn't running a RIP.
It's called Caldera. To be honest, I was only aware of Caldera and one totally open source one, but Frank mentioned yet another one that is available for Linux as well. Although from what I can tell, they don't hock it as much, which is a shame, but understandable.
As far as cutter drivers (another machine that a lot of people will have), if your plotter can support raw hpgl, there is built in support for that in Linux (while do have extensions for some equipment like Inkcut (standalone or Inkscape plugin)), but that is dependent on if your cutter can handle raw hpgl. As far as printers that run EPS, thats also handled natively, if it is nonEPS, looking at something like Ghostscript, which the open source version lags behind a generation or two compared to upstream. Last time that I checked anyway.
As things go more and more web based (or webview based), I see some of these limitations going way. Which is about the only possitive thing about this revolution.
Now here is the kicker, with regard to distros. A lot of people think that if it's a .deb package or .rpm etc, that it can only run on the respective distros with that package management system. Not the case at all. Those formats are actually nothing more than archive formats (.zip, .tar, .rar etc) and can be treated as such. I have many programs that are either only Ubuntu or Fedora based (most closed source programs will have a .rpm due to RHEL, Maya, Dragonframe etc) that just extract and drag/drop to the correct location and in a lot of instances off to the races. Now, there will be no official support, but that can be an option. Depending on if libs are static or dynamic, that could present another challenge, but for most closed source programs, I don't recall it being an issue, but at my age, my memory may not be what it once was. Now, to be sure, there are other considerations before one goes down this way, but just on the single fact that it's a .deb or .rpm etc file shouldn't be one of them.
A lot of people have thoughts of Linux as if it's still stuck in the 90s. Just not true, but it won't have everything or if it does have something, it may not be 1:1 even if it is the OEM that one is looking for. And that happens with Win/Mac as well. The fact that it isn't on Linux though, with regard to more of the commercial versions (Adobe etc (even though some of their bought products do have Linux versions)), that's on the OEMs, not on Linux itself.
I have been running Linux on bare metal exclusively for 15 yrs I think now. The only way that I would go back is if there was no other choice, I don't like the direction that I'm reading in the trades to go back to any other OS, but that's just me. People have to take things for a spin and evaluate for themselves.
I dabbled the idea for using it as a main workstation, but barely any software i use will run on it. It just makes me wonder who does use it.
This would be the same tack that I woudl take for those trying to switch from Win to Mac (or vice versa). Try not to look at it from the perspective of can it run x, y, z software, but can it do a,b,c function. I had some Windows only software, that if I tried to think of can it can it run X software, I would miss out on Y software that has the same (or more functionality depending on what function we are talking about).
