I am seriously considering pulling the trigger on a switch to Linux. Looking for advice and discussion

In terms of hardware, what are some good cost effective resources and what what things might I want to consider differently than what I am used to in both the Mac and Windows worlds? I need smart home management, a plex hub, and photo editing, as well as the usual other stuff.

EDIT: I use Capture One for photo organizing and editing. I have old computers I can repurpose for this endeavor, but they are pretty old. My main thought for this post was looking into what kind of hardware I could consider for building a new Linux system from scratch. I am very much am inclined to switch to Home Assistant,because Siri is dumb as a bag of rocks, and AppleHome does not have the features I want and is extremely buggy. Everything I have currently is in the Apple ecosystem, and my daily driver is an M2 Mac Mini. I am not inclined to put Linux on the Mac Mini at this stage. I use the complete Proton suite for all that stuff. Thanks!

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You can just try it out and see how it works for you.
Boot up from the USB and see how things work.
You can even setup a dual boot that lets you choose what system you want to boot into when you turn on your pc.
For me, getting away from windows that got more and more spammy and filled with bloatware was fantastic! I am currently only having some small issues with adding drives to steam and the sound, soundim?ng a bit muffled. But i am only 2 days in still

The most cost effective solution is the hardware you already own. Chances are good that everything will just work. You can boot almost every Linux installation medium directly from the USB stick into a functional desktop and try if you can access the internet and have working sound.
Lacking that used Thinkpads are usually great. Try to stay away from nVidia. NVidia drivers aren't bad but they are much much worse than AMD and Intel's.
Isn't smart home stuff done over the browser? Plex should work but you might consider switching to Jellyfin. For photo editing take a look at Krita and GIMP. For office stuff you would use Libre Office.
Almost all the programs you would use on Linux should be available on Windows and Mac as well, so you can try them out now. Chances are, if it is open source it should run on every OS.

There’s some unpacking in order. Is this For your desktop/daily driver? Or a self housing solution? What do you use your PC for usually? What hardware do you have?
- If it could be my full time personal driver for basic web surfing, email, home automation and photo editing, that would be great. Currently I do everything in the Apple ecosystem, but I have been getting increasingly frustrated with how buggy the software has become. It also drives me bonkers watching Safari use 6.43 of the 8GB of RAM I was dumb enough to purchase my system with. I've also been reading a bit of the recent news of security vulnerabilities in the Apple silicon. I am fairly privacy and security minded,so this bothers me. I use the full proton suite. That said, there's nothing really wrong with the computer and there is no rush to make this happen, and if something won't work on Linux, there is no problem continuing to do it on the Mac Mini.
  
  My advice is to get a few live Linux ISOs and put it on a USB drive with Ventoy. I might be wrong but I think only Asahi Linux and Fedora Asahi are compatible with Apple silicon.
  You’ll be able to boot into Linux with those and dip your toes in before deciding to install it and dual boot on your hard drive.
  Linux is more frugal with memory, but with 8GB I’d steer away from KDE and GNOME desktop environments. Cinnamon, XFCE and LXQt will run fast.
  As to the self hosting goals, I’d hold on for a while until you’re more familiar with Linux. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with too much change.

I'm not sure what you mean by cost-effective resources, are you wondering what things are worth investing into inside of a total budget versus which things you could be more frugal on? Overall I would say there's not a big difference in terms of what to consider differently from running Windows: Linux will benefit just as much from good hardware (maybe more?) as window as will.
If you want to do plex and utilize hardware video transcoding you'll probably want an Nvidia GPU but I've had better experiences with AMD graphics cards in Linux. The best home management tool I can recommend is home assistant, and it doesn't have particularly high system requirements, you can run it on a raspberry pi.

In terms of hardware I suggest AMD and never nivdia..
Do your homework on WiFi drivers and Linux installation first if you plan on installing over WiFi.
GIMP is great for photo editing on Linux.
Check if any other apps you can't live without have a suitable substitution or can run efficiently and easily with WINE.
Ubuntu snap is a mess, look it up.
Read the wiki of your chosen distro if you have problems or get stuck before asking technical questions, 9/10 times the answer is there.

What do you currently use for photo editing?
- CaptureOne
  
  It’s worth installing WINE to see if it just runs.
  If not, go here https://alternativeto.net/software/capture-one/ and set the filter to “Linux” (and “Open Source” if you prefer) to see what’s popular and reviews tell you why / why not.

- I honestly can't stand the Jellyfin UI, and it's a resource hog, at least on MacOS

What are you currently using for smart home? Might be helpful to list in the OP what programs you are used to in general btw. Most smart home systems are managed through the browser but I can imagine Apple's HomeKit may have some OS level integrations.
Personally, I use Home Assistant, which is an open source home automation hub that can interface with most vendors, including Homekit. This gives you the freedom to buy Apple, IKEA, Philips, Sonoff or other smart home products and use them all through a unified hub that has your automations. But I don't recommend adding Home Assistant and switching your desktop to Linux at the same time.
Try to change as little as possible and do one thing at a time.
Maybe getting started with learning GIMP is a good first step?

Just try it out for a bit, look for alternatives to the software you use on linux, or linux versions of that software, and as a last ditch effort try and see if it'll run in WINE.
- I’m still interested in trying this out, I just don’t have the bandwidth right now. I just want something that works - without me having to do a lot of work. At least for now. I got my iPad air swapped out at the Genius Bar, and I upgraded my iPhone. I was definitely having some hardware issues. And I couldn’t take advantage of AppleAI with my iPhone 13. I just wish Apple home could give me cool lighting scenes to choose from, or at the very least import them from Hue or Aidot. As it is I have two lighting systems that kinda play well together, but really I generally have to set each individually if I am syncing to a movie, or turning on some nifty color schemes.

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