No shame in having to switch back after giving it a try and running into a lot of issues. Having to reboot a lot is definitely unusual, there's probably something wrong with your setup, but who knows where the issue is or how long it would take you to fix. Hopefully you can give it another try in a few years and those issues have been resolved.
While this is still a massive problem, it does require a public fork at some point. So if you have a private repo that has never had a public fork, you should be safe.
From my own looking into this it looks like more of a suggestion than a request (for now at least), just a "this might be a good idea, we should look into it".
The deleting most emails is very interesting. In my personal email, I've been saved quite a few times by finding emails multiple years old. But I can definitely see how things would be quite different in a work email, and I may consider trying that myself.
Linux may very well not be for you, but using Arch first is like jumping into the deep end to learn how to swim. It's no surprise you're drowning. I'd recommend you try a gaming-focused distro like Nobara before you go back to Windows for good.
Windows has one major thing going for it: it’s best-in-class for gaming. It might even be the greatest gaming platform of all time. Linux and even Mac are gaining ground, but they’ve got a little ways to go.
...is Mac gaming actually gaining ground? From listening to a friend of mine who has a Mac, it sounds like Mac gaming is going steadily backwards. Wine and similar doesn't work very well for them, and Mac compatibility is happening with fewer and fewer games. Game Porting Toolkit isn't really for end users, is it? Is there something else my friend is missing?
The issue is one of licensing, not technology. There's all kinds of patents in the space, and using free codecs could still infringe them. DirectX doesn't have the same patent protection. I believe in theory you could make a fully open source Linux native version of DirectX.
For more info from someone who knows more than me, see here.
Well, sometimes Windows games depend on propietary codecs, and until Valve can get the devs to make adjustments so the codecs aren't needed, the games aren't going to work properly in regular Proton.
If GE received a Cease and Desist, that would be frustrating, but linux gaming would go on. If Proton got a Cease and Desist, that could be catastrophic to linux gaming. Valve could even theoretically get banned from working on linux gaming (like the Yuzu devs got banned from working on emulation). It's just not worth the risk for compatibility/performance for a smaller proportion of games.
This isn't binding tho, Adobe could change their minds in a year and then legally train an AI on all the data they've collected. Their own blog post doesn't even preclude that, their AI language is present tense. In addition they could just license the data to other AI companies.
Even if it wasn't a gimmick, it still wouldn't be benevolent. Corporations only lower prices when they think the lower price can make them more money overall.
I need some advice on what to throw on this laptop - and some suggestions on how to squeeze the best performance out of this (Optimus vs. Proprietary NVIDIA vs. Open source drivers).
One thing here, the open source Nvidia drivers still have a lot of performance issues. It's only fairly recently that NVIDIA has opened their drivers up enough to allow any kind of reasonable performance from open source drivers, and getting them up to par is still a work in progress. So stick with the propietary drivers for now, but keep an eye on the new open source driver, NVK.
(As far as distro recs go, I recently started using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and am really liking it, but I don't have enough experience with it yet to make an informed recommendation)
That said, Valve does not support the official Ubuntu way of installing Steam, which is via snap ('apt install steam' will install the snap). So you have to make sure to install the Steam way (manually via the deb) instead.
I think there's a difference when the source material isn't great. IIRC Forest Gump is another example.