While I can respect your opinion as to why you don't want to use Win 10, what does overhead in the OS have to do with mining performance? I can tell you from experience that it has no effect. Many of your better tools are on Windows, and remote management is a simple checkbox in the System control panel... takes 30 seconds to enable RDP.
Afterburner definitely blows away the available LINUX tools for overclock and fan management - but LINUX is a ton more stable than Windows.
I've yet to have a windows-based mining machine go A month (more commonly a couple weeks or less) without a hang or a reboot, my LINUX machines routinely go for months if I don't lose power or have to move them.
I don't DO remote management so can't speak to either side of the question there.
Tools (afterburner, precision, gpu-z, etc.) are better in Windows, so if you're not good figuring things out in Linux, it might be better for you to pay for Windows license and go that route. In general, Linux is more stable, more secure, requires less fewer resources (e.g. RAM) to run well, and (particularly wrt Win10) much better for privacy.
If you're doing BIOS mods on AMD cards, then the tools are also better on Windows, although that doesn't mean you also have to use Win for mining.