Thanks! Yeah I’m thinking I should get a higher RAM setup just for flexibility’s sake and futureproofing so some extent. 16GB was my bare minimum, but I’m looking at some configs with 32GB and they aren’t too much pricier. The soldered RAM is def iffy, as I like having the options to improve a build without too much headache, or no solid upgrade path whatsoever.

As for the Linux stuff, I’ve dabbled in it, and currently run ZorinOS on an old Thinkpad. It’s not heavily used, but it’s similar enough to Windows (as are many flavors), that the difficulty curve for me boils down to terminal stuff. I jump between Powershell, MacOS Terminal, and this on a roughly weekly basis, but by no means am I a scholar :P