just give 'em time. it’s still a bit early in the game for that play

iirc, they did do a limited regional test of subscription windows back sometime during win7.

rufus doesn’t help with preloads that you don’t want to or can’t, for whatever reason, overwrite with a ‘clean’ install.

perhaps higher amongst fediverse users, but not with the general public… default settings all around–including auto updates, no intentionally installed browser addons, maybe a wallpaper change. but that’s it… is the most common windows configuration we see, by far.

you could just point them to everybody’s favorite github-hosted script which has an option to unlock extended updates.

some of the schools around me just post on their web site or fb when they’re getting rid of old systems. they’re gone within an hour or two… they’re priced to sell fast.

for shits and giggles i took a win7 and a win81 straight to iot 24 with no problems on either. run the upgrade from a rufus’d (these were 2009-10 era desktops) usb made from a modded (upgradematrix) iso. going to 10 ltsc or iot should be the same process.

since you’re buying parts, you can specifically look for boards with 6-8 (more than that will require a ‘specialty’ board). 8 isn’t impossible to find. start a build on pcpartpicker, go straight to motherboards and filter 8 or more ‘SATA 6Gb/s Ports’, then sort low-to-high on price. you should find a msi pro am4 and an asus prime am5 that are quite reasonably priced and have multiple reputable vendors selling them.

otherwise you’re looking for an expansion card to add to a board you’ve already got or to expand one of those above for even more.

of course, you need the drive bays to hold them all, too. which can be harder to find at a reasonable and affordable price than motherboards and controller cards.

my sister ‘unthaws’ something by taking it out of the freezer.

linux mint’s “installers” can boot into a live environment.

and even when you do know what you’re doing, you’re probably choosing not to host your own. at least not one that faces the public. a private mail ‘server’ that consolidates mail for you from multiple providers (and sends mail back out the same way) is different.

i have an old wood desk at the office. it just resonates and amplifies noise when i set a desktop form factor external hdd (with its attached rubber feet) on it. it now sits on a couple old-school foam rubber mouse mats.

don’t expect a 19 year old laptop to perform all the tricks something more ‘modern’ can do, such as transcoding video for a streaming media server. also note that a t5600 is not a ulv chip (draws as much as 34w under load, on its own)–so probably not a candidate to run ‘lid down’ without some outside help for cooling.

it’s not fast, it’s not power efficient, it has slow networking (10/100 and 22-year old ‘g’ wifi), and lacks usb3 for ‘tolerable’ speed on extra external storage space—but it will be ‘ok enough’ for learning on.

if you go with something like yunohost or even dietpi, you will pretty much restrict yourself to what it can run and do and how it does it. if you want more ‘control’ or to install things they don’t offer themselves, you’ll need to ‘roll your own’. a base (console only) debian would be a great place to start. popular, stable, and tons of online resources and tutorials.

i use dietpi, which is built upon a minimal debian.

absolutely.

the ‘jell-o shot’ of appetizers.

win10-11. major oem prebuilt and cto should have it installed, otherwise it’s here:
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pg2dk419drg
should be ‘free’ afaik.

for win<10, get WebpCodecSetup.exe from the webm/webp project download archives: https://storage.googleapis.com/downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webp/index.html

and with very few exceptions i’ve run across, it’s also (intentionally or not) configured to produce shit-tier quality output by pretty much everyone implementing it at any sort of scale.

afaik the major pc laptop vendors, dell, lenovo, hp, ms surface… all have at least some models now with glass or haptic trackpad.

iirc, they have their own meat processing facilities. part of that production is used to make the hot dogs (since ~ 2011) for their long-running $1.50 combo with a soft drink.

it is a popular ‘free’ offering on most streaming devices and televisions (pihole works), plus the web site (dlp works on some). a lot of what they have is junk or on pretty much every other free service, but there’s always something to watch or rewatch on it.