There’s no performance improvement to wiping an SSD. At least not meaningfully, on a completely empty SSD that has been factory wiped. You may see a first time right improvement but that goes away as soon as the SSD starts doing garbage collection.

As for your other reasons, they’re completely up to you.

https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy

Take a look at Howdy, like finger print it wont allow full access but once you log in at first boot you should be able to lock and log back in using your face or other bio-metric.

Resize your partitions so you can use the empty space.

Then install to the new position.

Update grub.

Distro’s are not like picking between windows or mac, Nearly all linux distributions are based on the same linux kernel and many of the base GNU packages. The main differences between distributions are philosophical.

Some distro’s will focus on free as in speech over free as in beer meaning if something has closed source, or proprietary code they may or may not include it. You can still download and install proprietary software and drivers regardless of this initial choice.

Some distro’s will have a preferred package manager which is like their software or app store, but if you dont like the one they picked you can install a different one.

As for security, linux is as secure as you make it, its vastly more secure than Windows out of the box, and probably more secure than MacOS but we dont really know because both Apple and Microsoft dont publish their code so we cant review or audit its security. Setting up a secure linux install is dead simple and you can find dozens of guides for every distribution and edge case.

Since the main tool you want to run is Davinci Resolve it makes sense to see what distribution they test against and go with that, rather than pick an arbitrary “secure” distribution. It will be simpler to harden their preferred distro than to take a hardened distro and make their software work on it.

I suggest checking their website and going with their top suggestion.

KDE has good tablet mode support, and I strongly suggest using Xournal++ if she intends to use a stylus and take hand written notes.

nvidia shenanigans aside this should be fine for linux gaming.

No but on my 3 in 1 I find the touch screen and pen very useful as a big tablet for consumption, laptop for productivity and gaming, and writing and drawing pad.

Yeah I opted for the Framework 13, even with the less than perfect keyboard and lack of touch. My hope is that touch will be an option in the future. otherwise its a near perfect option.

I got a minisforum v3 and it’s amazing. I can actually game on it and use it as a real productivity device. KDE tablet mode works fairly well.

I’m not impressed with the performance of Intel these days not when you can get full Ryzen CPUs with decent graphics in a “tablet”.

I would love this!

Been this way for years now. I had to roll back my firmware using their proprietary maintenance tools and then force it not to update. New printers are probably worse since mine is several years old.

Why do we even pay you to be here, everything is working.

Nothing works, why do we even pay you!

Hard to prove you’re essential when the people pulling the strings have never had to do work and see technology as akin to wizardry.

Thank you to all civil servants you deserved better and we failed you.

I have a minisforum V3 and have been running KDE on it and its ok, I still cant get rotation working and yeah the lack of an onscreen keyboard is a real problem. But otherwise its more than usable.

Depends on the application. I run a nightly backup of a few VM’s because realistically they dont change much. I have containers on the other hand that run critical (to me) systems like my photo backup and they are backed up twice a day.

Only if you average the market. AMD destroyed Intel and Qualcomm.

o fucking please! My Pebble Steel is really showing its age.

because I can KVM from one computer to another in under 1 second and I dont feel like adding 14 to that. Plus Folding@Home.

But I like TP link…

Used UPS’s show up from time to time. I recently found a craigslist posting with 6 all of which were in decent shape needing some cleaning, and new batteries.

Batteries are the rub since they only last about 5 years so most used ones need new batteries. Good news is its not that hard to replace them as long as you take your time and pay attention.

Ubiquity is trash with fickle support based on the whims of what sells wide adoption. TP Link IMO is a decent value for the money if you want easy “prosumer” level networking gear. I have I have 3 TP Link APs as well as a 16 port 10g core switch and its great for my needs.

Mikrotik offers more features per $$ but its not as easy to use.