A big benefit of encryption is that if your stuff is stolen, it adds a lot of time for you to change passwords and invalidate any signed in accounts, email credentials, login sessions, etc.

This is true even if a sophisticated person steals the computer. If you leave it wide open then they can go right in and copy your cookies, logins, and passwords way faster. But if it’s encrypted, they need to plug your drive into their system and try to crack your stuff, which takes decent time to set up. And the cracking itself, even if it takes only hours, would be even more time you can use to secure your online accounts.

On Linux, my installs always had a checkbox plus a password form for the encryption.

If distro hopping happens more than once a week, please stop hopping immediately and dial 911 as this is the sign of a very rare and serious symptom

plays more upbeat music

You’re right. I can’t recall the other utility’s name. System Monitor is fantastic, but I just wish I could set the niceness and all that like you could on the old utility.

Well KDE had this awesome process management tool, I think it was called System Monitor or something. You could tune process priorities with IO and CPU. They deprecated the tool though, I think because nobody wanted to port it to QT6

EDIT: It’s not System Monitor. I can’t recall the name, but there used to be an app that let you set niceness / priorities of your processes.

HardInfo2 may be interesting to you

Should be plenty fast enough to handle Gnome or KDE. I think you’ll also want ZRAM because presumably your RAM won’t be much and your storage will either be slow or limited. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to enable.

I think both DEs are very touchscreen viable, with the possibility that you may have to configure a teeny bit, like adding a virtual keyboard

Well, in tech, if you have experience, that tends to be the biggest deal by far and can often do all the lifting on its own. But hiring managers also appreciate certs and formal education, especially if you don’t yet have much experience.

It would likely give you an advantage Vs some other person they’re considering with your level of experience.