BombOmOm

I had a look at the support page for the mobo, and there is a BIOS update from Mar 11th. It contains a zip with a .F52q file inside. You should be able to use that file directly from a USB in the BIOS.

Which motherboard do you have? There is almost always a way to load from a flash drive via the BIOS. Many motherboards even have a way to do it from a flashdrive without the UI working at all via a button on the back (BIOS Flashback).

The nagging popups, ads, the dubious ad-riddled webpages I have to visit to download apps.

I still have to use Windows at work, and it advertising apps in the start menu and specific games to me with a notification popup in pro versions of the OS just blows my mind. This is a piece of software my company paid extra for, and it has ads all throughout…in a completely ‘clean’ install.

It’s even worse since I end up using VMs at work, so I get to experience this over and over on each machine.

I would prefer to buy 2nd hand

It’s going to be hard to give a solid recommendation for a specific used computer. What I would say, however, is check out Swappa and Ebay. Those are my go-to places for used hardware.

Always nice to see more AMD laptops. Personally a fan of them as they work well for moderate gaming without a dedicated card.

Really wish Intel would get their chips up to snuff, simply because we really don’t want to just swap from one monopoly to another.

From what I can tell, Windows SE is the education version of Windows S-mode, which always sucked. Had a few run-ins with it on family computers and it was always a giant pain in the ass just to get basic programs running.

I’ve been meaning to get rid of Google Authenticator. Think I’m gunna go do that today. :)

If it makes you feel better, thunderf00t just came out with a new video. :)

I haven’t watched it yet, but it’s on my short list!

Maybe some finance, home repair, defense economics.

I never understood why people keep falling for the ‘dehumidifer will solve world water shortages’ thing over and over. It’s an old idea and there is damn good reason you don’t see this ‘obvious’ solution deployed everywhere. (Check out the WaterSeer video if you would like to know more)

Yeah, I also read it the opposite way as the author wrote it: 469 people were warned by Google after their government failed to warn them.

It’s not Google’s job to track and warn people about earthquakes, their job is to make sure their alert system accepts/distributes government safety warnings, which to my knowledge works just fine.

No electricity required.

Means this dehumidifier produces even less water than the standard powered dehumidifier.

Uses outside air.

Will breed even nastier shit in the water than one inside a building.

Absolutely. And that is the problem you actually need to solve in the places lacking potable water. They generally have some water, it just isn’t potable. Filters need regular replacing, additives like chlorine need constant resupply, and reverse osmosis is extremely energy intensive. It’s fundamentally a logistics problem.

These are called dehumidifiers and you should not drink the water that comes out of them.

The condensed water is pure, yes. But dehumidifiers almost instantly become a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty shit. Nasty shit that is now in your ‘pure’ water.

Edit: It’s the same problem as the WaterSeer which is also a passive dehumidifier. This same idea comes up several times a year, yet you don’t see them deployed in quantity anywhere. They simply don’t work well. (The WaterSeer actually seems like a better design than what is in OP’s article.)

I’ll likely be spending $8,000 a month

You can hire an actual programmer for that kind of money. Someone with years of experience who knows what they are doing.

If you are within visual sight of the mainland, you can use a pair of point-to-point communication dishes to get internet from the mainland and beam it to yourself. These dishes, only having to communicate over a few miles and with direct line-of-sight, are pretty reliable and not terribly expensive.

“Gaming Distro” just means some various gaming softwares are preinstalled, like Steam and Heroic (for GOG, Amazon, and Epic games). I mention this just to keep you from overly worrying about picking the “wrong” distro.

• Bazzite is basically SteamOS.

• Mint Cinnamon was my choice as it feels very familiar to a Windows user, and comes with a bunch of desktop productivity stuff pre-installed. It tends to remain on more time-tested, stable versions of software.

• Fedora Plasma is also very popular, and will feel familiar coming from Windows. It tends to have the latest and greatest version of softwares.

and maybe a guide on removing windows entirely once its all said and done

If you plan to switch over all at once, during the install, tell Linux to use the entire drive (ie, do a full format). That will completely remove Windows during the install.

If you are going to dual boot, you can format the Windows drive at some later time.

do’s and dont’s

If you are going to dual boot, don’t dual boot on a single drive. Windows likes to fuck with other things on the same drive as it, including other Windows installs.

If you get a prompt about codecs during the Linux install, install them.

Any sat internet that does not use low earth satellites is a giant pain. Pings measured in seconds, very low bandwidth, and very low data caps.

Pick basically anything else if you have the option.

It’s fine, no reason to sell the data, the service was literally just breached!

You don’t need a gaming specific distro. Those just mean some apps are pre-intalled, like Steam and Heroic (for GOG, Epic, Amazon games). If you like Fedora, keep using Fedora, it games just as well as any other distro.