If music production is your main objective, I would suggest Windows. I do some home recordings as well and have quite a baggage of pluggings and tools that are either unavailable, not compatible or not up to date on Linux (I’m on an Arch based distro). I have Windows and Linux on two separate SSDs for this exact reason. I managed to set up my Linux system in a way where I can work on some projects and got most programs to work one way or another but I always encounter hardware issues that have to do with drivers, especially with some of my older equipment. If you have the the option you can install another drive on youtrlaptop and run both Windows and Linux.

Now, there are folks out there that do music on Linux but there is a lot of work to do to keep things running, especially if you use lots different softwares and pluggins.

I don’t think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.

Sure you could argue that you’re not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist. I always found that anti piracy commercial “you wouldn’t steal a car” ridiculous as that’s not how piracy works.

For example, I do it because I don’t agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.

When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn’t afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.

I’m on windows 10, use my PC for work and gaming. The thing with windows is that it works right out of the box, all major softwares are developed for windows in mind. When shit stops working is when you start messing with stuff that isn’t your typical “start the PC -> download program -> install -> run the program -> shut off” which is what most users do. Updating the os, softwares and GPU drivers are easy tasks.

It’s when you start messing with python or softwares that aren’t too mainstream and require a bit more effort that things have the potential to break. Even then, the os itself won’t break on you unless you really try. I broke windows a few times in 15 years but it’s worth mentioning that I was manually and willingly changing registry keys and messing with a lot of other stuff. Even then most of the time I was able to fix it.

With Linux is different. If you just use the OS for basic stuff like browsing the internet and editing documents you should be fine for the most part (if you choose a user friendly and stable distro like Ubuntu or Mint). The moment you try getting to run niche softwares or something that requires you to manually open the command prompt to change things in order to accomodate what you’re trying to achieve, that’s where it gets tough for most people. That’s how Linux works, it’s the user’s fault though not the machine’s.