Should I do the same if I want to expose an OpenAI compatible API to access an LLM to chat remotely on local technical documents?

It feels awesome.

You should check Mint again, things in the Linux world are improving fast lately. Some people got their grampas into Linux and they are happy using it, with your use case it can easily also be the case, the terminal it’s not needed, may be sporadically and to setup some things as you like at first, like changing settings to not enter passwords, may be it’s not so safe but it’s not as unsafe as using Windows. Just get used to the good habit of making regular backups. In any case just make a post asking and we will be happy to help. Just go ahead and slowly you will get confidence to do more difficult things. The freedom that you experience using Linux really worth it, but it can take time to appreciate.

I’ve been using Debian with KDE Plasma for over a decade and I can count the crashes with the fingers of one hand.

Here you can find hardware for linux that requires no proprietary driver or firmware, in your case is ASUS BT400. I was in the same situation as yours so I bought it and it works.

Here you have all the packages you can install for specific purposes grouped by categories

commands.txt every command with a one line description and a separator.

The idea is to restore Windows to the same laptop in case I want to sell it, so it shouldn’t have any issues, right?

Great, I didn’t know that you can make a checksum of a drive. Thanks.