I use Bitwig on an Arch Based distro. It works really well. Thanks to the flatpak package of bitwig, your choice of distro should not matter that much (in regard to running bitwig). So far I've only used bitwig and vst/clap plugins with a native vst version (vcv rack for example) those also work great. So far, I have not tried to get windows plugins to work. But that's a Todo item for the future. I plan to use yabridge for this, but as you have read yourself, current NI plugins are a hassle and hardware specific plugins especially. I face similar issues with overbridge for my elektron machines...
At least when it comes to native Linux audio software like bitwig and reaper, my experience is highly positive. But the landscape is a lot smaller then on windows and for some stuff, and some things do require more reading and tinkering so I'm not recommending it to everyone but certainly encourage it. :)