I'd hoped a new, more powerful computer would be less intrusive, quicker, more efficient, but the freakin' thing is even worse than the old laptop I've been using. Windows 10 seems to not let one decide whether or not to update, though it's possible to enable restarts for certain hours. Then there's a whole battery of Samsung utilities that act the same. I remove programs I don't want or need & they get put back on. I don't have WiFi anymore, though, or Bluetooth, which mysteriously disappeared.

@EuphoriaLavender This is why I switched to Linux on the desktop some years ago. It doesn't necessarily work any better, but at least I have [more] control.

(Of course, I spent some years beforehand switching over to crossplatform applications, and I'm married to a senior Linux reliability engineer so I have a pretty good safety net too.)

@gamehawk

I wish I could say I'm less frustrated with trying to use Linux! Made a Mint boot disk that I can't get to boot on either laptop, so I downloaded some flavor of Ubuntu while I still had WiFi but I haven't tried to use that yet. It would help if I could find answers regarding how to change the boot drive on either computer, as nothing I've tried so far has worked. It all seems like such a waste of time & energy. I wish I had a modern expert like yours in my life! Nice you value yours!

@EuphoriaLavender Yeah, it was nice that he could copy a known-good Debian boot disc from work to set us up. Getting machines to actually boot off it is always the challenge, though. Different for every computer, especially laptops.

@gamehawk

I didn't expect the booting from another drive this to be such a challenge. I feel better about the whole thing knowing that you and your expert have had the same kind of issues.