Loupe
Drop-in replacementFreeAlready installed on Ubuntu and Fedora. Opens instantly on double-click, browses a folder, crops and rotates.
Your files: Opens .jpg, .png, .heic, .webp and most camera raw files.
Does Windows Photos run on Linux?
Verdict: No
No. The Photos app is part of Windows and has no Linux version. Your Linux desktop already includes an image viewer that opens pictures on a double-click, and a free photo manager covers the album and editing side.
Photos is bundled with Windows and Microsoft has not released it anywhere else. There is no download.
Viewing is already solved on the other side. On Ubuntu and Fedora, double-clicking a photo opens the built-in Image Viewer, where you can flick through a folder with the arrow keys, zoom, rotate and crop. On KDE systems the equivalent is called Gwenview. Neither needs installing.
What you need to replace deliberately is the organising. Photos gathered everything on the machine into one timeline, grouped by date and by face. Nothing on Linux does that by default. digiKam is the free tool that goes furthest, and it will index a folder of photos into albums, dates, tags and even faces, but it is a heavier app that expects you to set it up once.
Copy the actual picture files across and nothing is lost. Any albums or edits you made inside the Photos app live in a Windows database rather than in the files, so those do not come with you. If a photo has been cropped or filtered in Photos, save the edited version out as a new file before you move.
What to use instead of Windows Photos
digiKam
Close matchFreeThe replacement for the library side. Indexes your whole photo folder into albums, dates and tags, and edits too.
Your files: Reads the same photo files and writes its tags into standard metadata, not a private database.
GIMP
Different way of workingFreeFor heavier editing than crop and rotate. More like Photoshop than like Photos, so expect a learning curve.
Your files: Opens .jpg, .png and .psd, and saves back to the common formats.
This doesn't have to stop you
One stubborn program doesn't have to decide the whole question. You can keep Windows on the same PC and restart into it only when you need Windows Photos. Everything else you do can move.
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