the intel alder lake-n and twin lake-n have some chips with very low tdp… basically just the “e cores” from a desktop cpu, drawing as little as 6w tdp. nice chips if you don’t need the raw compute power of the desktop’s performance cores. they make for nice little servers and laptops for ‘normal’ users. minipc form factor desktops with them are very affordable.
i like my laptop ‘server’. low power chip that never throttles up to its max 15w tdp, runs cool with display off and lid closed, needs no kb and mouse attached, and the battery is just a bonus ups. it sits out of the way on a shelf like a book.
don’t forget to pick up the original, which is also free. i put in way more hours into it than i care to admit when it was a new game.
this worked. was already logged in. loaded that link in a different tab, went back to the other and refreshed. saw the cart had something, loaded it and was able to check out.
half the internet is 45 years old this year.
garbage in, garbage out.
Following the decision, Nvidia estimated the decision would cost the GPU giant nearly $10.5 billion in the first half of its 2026 fiscal year. AMD reported the export ban would cost the firm $1.5 billion in lost revenues in 2025.
and they wouldn’t be able to find customers elsewhere for their in-demand products to mitigate some or even all of that “lost” revenue?
if you go in not knowing what to do, it can seem ‘difficult’. but it’s mostly like on any other oem prebuilt:
optional: prep the target disk (backups, wipe or clear part table, etc), reset bios to defaults.
if necessary: switch from raid or rst to ahci sata mode, default boot mode to efi, disable secure boot. note that some distributions support secure boot but your method of creating an installer might not–you may be able to re-enable if you want after install.
note that hp systems have a hoop to jump through (a confirmation prompt to disable) after disabling secure boot on the next startup. do not use esc key to trigger boot menu, use f9 for boot menu, f10 for bios entry… as esc will cancel the confirmation code prompt and automatically re-enable secure boot.
insert or plug-in installer, hit the magic key upon power on (f12 for dell, f9 for hp) to bring up boot menu and select installer media, boot and run installer.
go through their list of games on protondb to see if linux would be a good fit, it might not be, depending on their library.
you’ve got a nice ‘short list’ of distributions to evaluate. i’d recommend setting each up yourself on a spare system to see how ‘point and click’ they are in setting-up, running, and updating the games they play.
also keep in mind the more hoop-jumping and manual configurations you need to do, the greater the chance of something breaking–like during os or wine-related updates. those kinds of issues are the ones your friend will be relying on you to fix for them so you definitely want to minimize the chances of that happening.
‘decision anxiety’ is definitely real. there’s literally too many choices and different ways to deliver the same end result.
ubuntu studio is an excellent choice for your use case. you just gotta jump in with both feet