I’m trying to build a workstation for my wife who is a graphic design by trade. She has only ever used Window so I thought that this would be a great way to introduce her to Linux. I just have some questions about getting this project off the ground.

1. Am I better off buying a cheap, prebuilt desktop and adding some extra parts like a GPU and more memory or building it from the ground up?

2. For a distro, I was thinking about Linux Mint but would other distros be better options?

3. Other than GIMP, what are some essential software for graphic design and digital art on Linux?