data1701d

Every package manager you mention is shit.

Every package manager ~~you mention~~ is s***.

How old are these machines, from oldest CPU model to newest CPU model?

I mean, depending on the budget desktop, it might be much better than a Raspberry Pi 5, which I hear is already occasionally used for such things.

Assuming this is an ATX or ITX PC, there's likely a way to reset UEFI so you can disable fastboot and change your settings, or at least boot from a recovery USB.

There's usually something like a button or 2 pins you can short on your motherboard to reset the settings. If your machine has dual BIOS, there will be a switch you can flip, though you'll probably need to update the UEFI again once you do that.

In the worst case (and this should work on almost any device), remove the CMOS battery, let the device sit for a few minutes, then put that battery in. That should clear all settings, including fastboot, and allow you to do recovery stuff - just make sure you fix the time before going on the internet.

Just to make sure - it’s not some cable hitting a fan in a case, right?

I’ve seen systems before where a cable is too close to a fan, and you don’t hear a noise until the fan speeds up.

Usually, you don't need to bother much with drivers at all outside of Nvidia GPUs and Broadcom modems since the kernel is monolithic and contains most drivers.

On an ATX motherboard, I think it's extremely rare for the ethernet chipset to require an out-of-kernel driver.

Honestly, even AMD to Intel would probably go mostly fine, considering the monolithic nature of the kernel and it having most drivers built in.

You'd probably want to make sure you have the Intel firmware package installed and make sure to remove configs specific to AMD stuff, like power management configs and kernel parameters, but it would still most likely boot.

Honestly, probably no. You're switching to something with the same CPU generation and micro architecture, and the boards are by the same manufacturer with the same mobo chipset generation (both 5xx). It should be plug and play.

The only major change I can see the old CPU has an iGPU, while the new one doesn't, meaning that you won't be able to use the video port built into your motherboard, only the ports on your GPU. I'm guessing you probably weren't using that HDMI port in the first place, so it's probably non-issue.

EDIT: There is a small chance you'll have to change your fstab depending on how it's configured; if it's done by drive UUID, it won't be a problem.

I think I made the mistake of pushing my grandfather away from Linux. He’s retired but does some professional photography; he’s used Photoshop for years, but said he’s open to leaving Adobe.

One day recently, he told me he heard about “this Linux thing” and asked me if it would be a good fit and run Windows applications well. I told him his main issue was probably Photoshop, and that even switching, he’d still need some stable, consistent way to open past PSD files. In retrospect, maybe I should have looked more closely at his use case to see the complexity of his edits and if they might have worked well in another program that runs on Linux.

I think for the MS Office thing, it depends on what it’s being used for. If it’s just creating a fresh document or editing a simple existing docx, LibreOffice it totally fine; I’ve heavily exclusively used LibreOffice Writer during my time in college and been okay, as I’m either just writing in MLA or using a provided Word file that I can then just save as an ODT after initial conversion and export as a PDF when it comes time to turn it in.

However, from what I can tell, if you’re working in an organization that extensively uses MS Office, files may need to survive multiple openings and edits between multiple editors, and multiple cycles of translating between document representations can lead to degraded documents and just make your work life absolutely miserable. Thus, LibreOffice isn’t an option, though I hear there are more MS-compatible suites that are usable on Linux, though not all of them FOSS.

This is why I’ve so far left my mother alone about Linux; maybe if I saw some evidence that her workflow would be more amenable to LibreOffice than I think it is, I’d reconsider.

I usually format my external drives to exFAT since it's fully supported R/W on all major operating systems, in the slim chance I have to use macOS.

Still, no need for the OP to reformat their drive; NTFS tends to work just fine.

I agree with other people that you should futz around with your GPU drivers and different Wayland compositors first, but also, if you ever had to reinstall, there is such thing as saving your dotfiles to significantly reduce setup time.

I don't do that because I'm lazy, but it certainly is a thing