ethd

Really I think a temporary dual boot to test everything would be the sanest option, and then when you're ready to commit, back up your home folder and repartition your drive accordingly. If you end up never ready to commit, well, second-gen Ryzen is officially supported on Windows 11 as long as you enable fTPM and Secure Boot in your BIOS.

Here's a few pointers based on what I've found out:

1. The desktop environment or WM is important. Given your need for Steam Link to work I'd suggest using one with X11, as last I checked Steam Link just gives you a black screen and audio under Wayland. Linux Mint would carry over your knowledge of apt while maintaining an interface that's pretty familiar to Windows users and is I believe still an X11 distro for now.
2. I got the EA app working using Bottles but it constantly feels like a cat-and-mouse game fixing it whenever it has an update. I basically stopped using it altogether for that reason. Not trying to scare you off — it's just not a great experience.
3. Play with drivers for your GPU. The situation with Nvidia is, I'm told, not as dire as it once was on Linux but still needs more work than AMD or Intel graphics to work well. The proprietary driver may still give the best experience on games, though Nouveau seems to be doing very well. This is admittedly something I need to come back to in order to confirm (I have one machine with Nvidia graphics and it's in storage specifically because Nvidia graphics under Linux were such a pain).

I've clearly been doing the purse thing all wrong

Genuine Intel 0000 means it's an engineering sample. I would guess this is some sort of preproduction/production sample Thinkpad with that in mind.

The kids are alright

Gungrave G.O.R.E, since the headline doesn't say

It'll be compatible with 5 Gbps devices, but if you're intentionally looking to restrict even 10 Gbps devices down to 5 Gbps for some reason, you might be able to find something in your BIOS that lets you do that, or you can get a USB 3.0 extension cable that'll limit your speeds to 5 Gbps.

I moved to Pop!_OS entirely when I built my new system earlier this year (had already been using it on my non-gaming laptop for several years) and relegated Windows to an external SSD that has been essentially collecting dust — I think I've used it three or four times.

My experience isn't the same as everyone's, but I'm not in love with most multiplayer games, my work uses software that can be run within Wine/Bottles or a browser, and my preferred creative outlet is writing, which could also be done in a browser if I wasn't such a picky bitch (I am, but Scrivener barely needs massaging to work under Wine and can even be made to look native thanks to using Qt).

Damn, this is a shame. Penny's Big Breakaway has been the most fun I've had on a game for a while, but I kind of expected it wasn't going to be a huge success for people who hadn't been following the Evening Star team for years with a new and unproven IP and a rather unique gameplay style among platformers.

Figma balls

English-speaking countries try not to police other English-speaking countries' dialects challenge (impossible)

Respectfully, this is unhelpful. This is talking about Unplugged, a completely different company, in reply to Phi.

I think their joke was that Thinkpad Arch users (at least online) have a strong correlation with trans women