If you don't like Win 10 and its upgrade strategy which is fully understandable from the perspective of customers then do it like me.

Build a performant and reliable Xeon based system with Win 7 and use a good internet security solution like ie Norton or Kaspersky.

Implement a good backup strategy including internal backup disk for speed and external backup disk to be able to disconnect to be protectey against encryption trojaner.

I escaped Win 8 and 10 madness since 3y and hope to survive another 5-8y.

CPU power is sufficient. GPUs can be changed 1-2 times on demand. USB 3.1 and 10 Gbit Ethernet - if required - is easily performed by using PCIe based upgrades. If you take a server board and ie socket 2011-3 then you have plenty PCIe lanes and memory BW.

If u take ie UFX+ and Madi then you have with USB3.0 for long time a high quality and scalable solution.

Linux is not yet ready for the masses with felt ~250 distributions without any trend towards consolidation to one more easily supportable system. Although it would also be my preference compared to Win 10 as a service which is not easily maintainable anymore by selecting only security patche for upgrades.
And not to forget the changed license terms and subsystems that have strong impact on privacy.

I would go for a solid and proven Win 7 system although I also dislike to use old software soon not being maintained enough anymore. I hope the security software suitey fill most of the gaps here...

By this I expect more stability and privacy compared to Win10 until there will hopefully come a better Win 11.

With Linux you only will have difficulties. Limited amount of DAWs and VSTs and recording Interfaces. This needs more time in the Linux community to slowly decide where they want to go in the Desktop market.

200+ distributions is nothing to convince the industry to switch to Linux or to easily decide on what Distribution to develop and to make quality checks, create installation packages, support users who are not Linux specialists. Even with Windows it can become challenging.

MC > Oh yes, sorry, I didn't see the HDSPe tab. "Thuderbolt" confused me, after USB and Firewire (connexion nam) , I was searching for another connexion name like PCI/PCIe or something similar to the upper left menu under RME logo.

Thanks for help.

So no Linux drivers. Is tehre any RME hardware compatible with Linux ?

DAW Mastermind > yes, privacy is another issue I didn't mentioned. I'd go to seven if I could but I bought a W10 licence, it is not a win7 upgrade. I'll check but I'm pretty sure I can't transform it in a W7 licence.

What they've done with W10 is absolutely crazy. The PC has Firefox, JRiver (audio listening software) and HDSPe drivers and nothing else. With no JRiver plugin activated, it is still unable to play a 16/44.1 flac without making huge blanks (1 to 30 seconds). It is due to update process, various scans, I can see it perfectly in the task manager. The CPU is not a killer (AND AM1 platform) but it is still a 2ghz quad core, the drive is a high quality SSD, it's using 1gb of ram out of 4 gb available, having this kind of issue is unacceptable.

Yes, there are tons of linux distributions, but if you support Ubuntu, I think you cover most end-users.
Ubuntu is really easy to use. More than W10 on my opinion.
Add Redhat and Debian, you've got everyone. Any end-user using another distribution is expert and is certainly not using his PC for audio.

I think RME should think about it ...

For now, I guess I'll have no choice but to move to another hardware brand supporting Linux, it is out of the question I give an additional single cent to MS and buy a 7 licence.