Hey there--have you heard about any other tools that can assist with visual impairment? I know there are some high tech wearables out there nowadays that can help with reading. This company called OrCam has a little camera that attaches to glasses, essentially it helps with reading for partially sighted people (http://www.orcam.com/smart-glasses-for-the-visually-impaired-reading-is-possible-again/), so that when you simply point at a word, it reads the text out loud in your ear. They are a bit pricey, but I think it's worth it to have more independence--I've found it to be extremely helpful for everyday life, and it's helped me tremendously with my vision loss. Definitely recommend you check this one out, although I know there's tons of products that are similar out there, so do some research. Hopefully this helps, I know they've helped me a lot.

Primarily a Windows user; high-contrast themes and Windows Magnifier are enough to get me by on most systems (Windows 7 and above).

I set my system up to dual-boot into Ubuntu a handful of times (last was probably 3-4 years ago, I think). I don't remember finding the same global usability hotkeys as Windows, but once I found the magnifier and contrast features, it was a pretty similar experience.

You should be able to $1 on your current system to see how it looks/handles without making any major changes.

Most (newer) windows devices do have a built in magnification program! It's not the best but it's fairly easy to use (just press the window key and plus). However, if you have the oprion of getting something like zoomtext fusion (which has both screenreading and magnification software), then i'd recommend doing that

My personal advice is don't, especially if you may be using a screen reader in the future, and especially as your primary OS.

Orca support and use is overall kind of terrible and broken these days in my experience. The screen magnification tools are limited in quality and functionality. I still use linux, but not primarily.

Very high odds that you would be much happier primarily using something like voiceover plus the built in mac magnifier (or zoomtext) or NVDA on windows plus windows magnifier or zoomtext.

I can't help you with magnification or Linux , but I will just say I use NVDA as my primary screen reader and I love it. I was a mac, voiceOver user for many years, and I still own a mac. However, I have not booted into Mac OS for a long time, because I find that windows and NVDA takes care of my needs much more powerfully and efficiently. I bet you could install lenix onto your mac, just to try some things out, before you get a new computer.

Zoomtext makes a format for macs. I use it everyday, along with a massive monitor, and I like it much more than trying to switch to windows.

Back when I used Linux on the desktop (until 2007) everyone was either using or wanted to use Compiz, a compositing window manager which, among many other special effects, had a magnification plugin, but from what I recall the plugin wasn't as usable as the MacOS accessibility zoom because it didn't zoom the mouse cursor and didn't allow centering the cursor on the screen due to limitations with the X Window system, I think.

Nowadays I use a late 2011 MacBook Pro with a broken screen because I can't justify the price of a new one as I've gone blind and the only things I do with a computer now are browsing reddit and listening to radio streams.

I don't know anything about magnifiers, since I'm totally blind.

There is one screen reader for GNU/Linux called Orca. It works primarily on GTK applications, though lately it also works on some other toolkits. It has braille display support through BRLTTY, which is a library that does braille display stuff on Linux as well as driving braille displays when the user is on the console. I haven't used Orca for a while, but I generally find it a little laggy/unresponsive, but if you use a Mac you may be used to that, since VO response is also a bit laggy and uneven.

For pure console use, there's yasr, which works well enough.