I used to use Adobe applications and have found decent alternatives for Photoshop (GIMP), Illustrator (Inkscape), and Premiere Pro (KdenLive) that run on Ubuntu.
Among those, Kdenlive probably measures up the worst to its Adobe counterpart. I am happy with it as an NLE, but I can’t deny that Premiere Pro is quite a bit more useable and powerful. The new interfaces do take some getting used to, but they are all excellent tools in their own rights.
It’s pretty misleading to refer to Stalinist Russia as “the reality of socialism.” Kinda like calling the US the “reality of democracy.” Yes, it is nominally a democracy, yes it is built on democratic principles and has features of a democracy. But democracy is a broad concept and the US’s specific version of that is not the end-all-be-all of democratic systems, it is one example. Implying that the worst authoritarian aspects of the USSR are inherent to socialism is ridiculous.
“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” - George Orwell
I also like Darktable for photo editing and used Audacity over Adobe Audition even when I had an Adobe sub.