Have looked at dual boot before but it seemed like a ( admittedly fairly minor) pita. File sharing/ access across both systems is my main concern. Thanks for your response.

Nice, i will take a look at this. With virtualization are both OS able to share files/ access the same files?

In line with many folks’ suggestions here, I’m ALL for switching to Linux full time after playing around with a few distros… BUT, I use dxo Photolab for photo editing which doesn’t run on Linux, yes, even through wine etc.

Also yes, I know the are a bunch of great Foss alternatives. I’ve tried them all. Nothing touches the results from my current program unfortunately.

I would be stoked if anyone could enlighten me as to how I could get that working.

plus 1 for Vivaldi. No complaints here.

Regarding media literacy, the number one book I can recommend anyone wishing improve theirs is " The News" by Alain de Botton.

Good bot.

Cross platform browser led by one of the devs from Opera. Begun after Opera was bought by current operator. Feature rich, privacy focused. Responsive Dev team. Worth a look for sure.

Vivaldi time.