Oh. . . I get it now. From the message title, I thought you had no power for an hour. Been reading about the fragile condition of the Australian power grid and was probably primed for that thought.

Depends on what you use your PC for. For work, I'd consider Typora or Obsidian for markdown editing. At home I use LyX rather than LibreOffice, but some kind of office product is probably a good idea. For gaming, and for the odd thing that arises, perhaps Wine. If you edit movies, KDEnlive, if you write CD's K3B, if you edit images Gimp, etc. Oh, and something to do backups. DejaDup is what I use, but I used to use Rsynch and later Unison.

Ironic. You would think with a name like "Windows" that managing Windows would be what the product does best.

Likewise. I have had one NVIDIA update not install properly in eight years (and in fairness, installing Video drivers in Windows was not a great experience either). I've also had self inflicted pain where I've overridden dependencies and caused later issues, but not recently either. I suspect that is pretty dependent on the distribution you use. I've used Debian, Mint and Ubuntu mainly for the past more than 8 years as a full time daily driver.

I'm not a professional developer, and I don't know if the Visual Studio version is a poor second cousin for support, but this site suggests it is available for Linux. Download Visual Studio Tools - Install Free for Windows, Mac, Linux[^] Personally though, every time I've cut any code, I've been super happy with the tools that come with Linux - though I get a new user might take a little while to discover them all. I guess it depends on what you do.

I've been running NVIDIA on Linux Mint for about 8 years give or take. People way NVIDIA is a problem, but other than one instance where an upgraded package left me without X-Windows (which was fixed by removing the package manually and installing it again), I've never had an issue. Other than that issue, and some hardware problems where the machine locked up when running GPU intensive workloads (because the heatsink and fan fell of the video card) Linux has been rock solid and never skipped a beat. Complaints: I was not able to get the Samsung mobile phone backup software to work under Linux a few years back - so I had to use Windows for that once when I changed phones. Discord wants a package re-install about once per week. You start it up, it tells links you to an updated .deb file, and you download and install it either by double clicking on it from the Gui, or manually according to your preference. That might be because Firefox is my default browser and it doesn't run remote code. Chrome is available and also works. Otherwise, everything pretty much works. Not only do I not miss Windows at all - I feel sad when I have to use it for work . . .

I think "built" is the wrong use of words. I would use "assembled". If the plans are done, and you just need to implement according to an established standard by assembling pre-established components according to a pre-established pattern. . . then yes. Kind of the way that building a car can be done by hand, but usually it's done on a production "assembly" line. That's one of the tantalising possibilities of low code environments. But just because, you can, doesn't mean that anyone can, or that the results are spectacular. Methinks doing work very rapidly has implications with regard to quality, and what might be accepted and acceptable.

Which new outlook? The thick client, or the web based version. I'm not a fan of either, but think the web based one is better for most things. Better still it's the same (mostly) for whatever OS you run. Honestly though, I miss PC-Pine (now Alpine I think). . . but I'm weird that way.

The only place I can think of where this would be a sensible approach, would be where it was more important that you got experience with the protocols, standards and how it all works, than it was to deliver a complete and functioning product without security issues. Paraphrasing from Bruce Schneier, Given sufficient effort, everyone is smart enough to develop a product that they cannot find fault with. Is there a more serious implementation a little further off where this might be a training opportunity?

My personal observation is that Windows 10 is slower than Windows 8 on the same hardware. My observation (completely unscientific) is that Windows 10 is slower on the same hardware as compared to when it was first released. I mean it's a common observation that it gets slower the longer it's been installed - but a fresh install once patched feels slower to me. Maybe my expectations have changed. I come home to a lesser specified but blazingly fast Linux machine - so I get to relive the experience every day. Depending on your friends budget, and their intended use of the machine. Perhaps Linux is an option too. My grandmother seemed OK with it for browsing and e-mail. YMMV

Honestly - I'm a bit of a keyboard nut. I'm sure I could recommend a few different ones, but it depends on what you are after, and if you are a keyboard snob or not (I am). Firstly - the sounds of your keyboard are going to be much quieter if you're wearing headphones and listening to music of your choice. If you want/need a mechanical keyboard, the quietest switches are "linear" ones. Usually called Red (or Cherry Red) - there are now so many variants in all sorts of colors. Next up the scale but also fairly quiet are brown switches, usually called "tactile". If you like to feel feedback when you press a key, then tactile is probably the go. The noisiest switches are "clicky" usually blue. There are other variations in different color, green, black, clear etc - which all vary the various performance of the switch - how hard it is to press, how far it needs to be pressed to actuate etc. If you don't care about the typing experience, then most low profile membrane or chicklet key keyboards will be fine. (Personally hate them - find them like typing into a wet sponge, but YMMV). If you want a super responsive mechanical keyboard, which is quite quiet, has low actuation distance - then I'd recommend a Logitech keyboard with Romer-G switches. Compared to other tactile mechanical keyboards, they take a little getting used to but they are pretty good. Logitech make a few different keyboards with these switches, with and without backlighting, single color or RGB, and wired or wireless. Or you can get a cheap one from Amazon/Temu with red or brown switches, but YMMV. Cheaper is not always better, but there are some good ones for around $50 AUD. ($30 US appx). Hope that helps.

There's one or two programs that won't work, but I switched a few years back (to Linux Mint) and never looked back. By one or two programs, just about everything mainstream has a native version, or will run in Wine. Even most games (some still limited by flakey DRM). Some even run faster. The things I've not been able to get working are Samsung phone backup software and that kind of thing. And it's so fast (comparatively). I needed 16GB ram for Windows, on Linux I could make do with 8GB. That said, I have a feeling that on a laptop it's not as frugal with battery use. I don't have a laptop, but people who I know that do are telling me battery use is not as good. . . those same people are not ones that will have optimised anything though. Hope that helps.

Ironically, the shutdown option does not fully shut down the machine, it hibernates things for a faster start up, while the reboot option does quiesce the files for a fresh start up. Check this link for more information if you do not think I'm right. Actually, don't believe me - check it for yourself. How to disable Windows 10 fast startup (and why you'd want to) | Windows Central[^] The search string to Google for is "Disable fast startup" Just switching your machine off at the power probably doesn't make Windows any less reliable. The filesystem should pretty much cope - though odd applications will require their files to be saved or the program to be exited to avoid the loss of data.

Premature optimisation is the root of all evil . . . said someone smarter than me (Donald Knuth).

. . . And don't ever let it connect to the Internet. My laser was great until a firmware update created all the same "Vendor cartridge" related issues. Was super happy with it up to that point. Now it's junk. Vendor name starts with 'B' and rhymes with the person who brought you into the world.