You can also switch to LibreWolf for better privacy but don’t try to take all the steps at once. Slow and steady is better.

Wait, Pop_OS switched to rolling release?

First of all, welcome.

Don’t try to install many different distros in a short span unless you are a distro-hopper. Just pick one and do everything on that. Manjaro would cause problems especially if you enable AUR. If you want cutting-edge and still want to use GUI for management, I suggest OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

For hard disk read-only situation, that happens with NTFS partitions for safety reasons. You can change that with Gnome Disks by setting auto mount and user options. Know that NTFS is a Windows file system and runs on a compatibility system on Linux.

It’s better to start with beginner friendly distros. Some people even settle with one distro and use it without changing ever. Unless you want to discover under-the-hood features, most distros will look the same.

Also, things work differently on Linux. Once you get used to them, you’ll find them more straightforward comparing to Windows. However, getting used to them might be a challenge for some people. Get ready to read Wikis.

Don’t be hasty. Continue to use Windows until you feel ready while creating your ideal workspace.

Go for functionality before starting customization anything, you can do that anytime.

While this is true for my another older netbook (40 W), my netbook’s power consumption for running Pi-hole is ~15 W. I think it’s acceptable for such operation. 5 W is tempting though.

I’m using my old netbook as Pi-hole and some home server stuff. Does its job.

Depends on what you need actually. I was doing fine with urxvt on Xorg, so foot is a perfect alternative for me on Wayland.

Jevons didn’t know that autonomous vehicles can work like a hive mind, today it’s possible.

It doesn’t use Visual Basic for its macros so I wouldn’t expect a complex compatibility. To be fair Excel macros is usually a problem outside of MS Office.

It’s not open source but probably has the best compatibility. You can give it a shot.

https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Needs an account after one week though.

Not Linux but Haiku would run on it I think.

As a calligrapher, this is not pleasing to look at. Far from it.

I think I used to do that with wicd.

I’m kinda lazy so when I need one, I just use Gnome Boxes and it’s pretty easy to setup.

Well, it changes after you start to use them. With enough experience, you’ll start to think that, “I don’t like this feature that much, how would it be this way?”, and there is probably already a WM that does it.

I started using WMs long ago but my first tiling WM was i3 as well. However configuring it to the way I like was taking a lot of time, so I was in a search for a WM that does what I like out of the box. After searching I have found bspwm. It is still my go-to WM if I use Xorg, but I moved to Wayland recently and Hyprland was the easy choice. Though currently I’m reading river’s documentation and I’m thinking to switching to it when I feel ready. From what I read, it can do what I want, with enough configuring. And it seems really flexible.

You can boot Linux via USB but you cannot boot Windows that way. It’s a Windows problem with no solution.

I mean you don’t really use Arch if you don’t bork it once in a while. :)

If you can access it on Windows, that’s a good thing and all you need is a disk repair there. If you cannot access it even on Windows, you’ll need file recovery (and another 4TB disk).

However, note that there is a good chance for NTFS disks to get corrupted on Linux if you unmount them without getting the notification that indicates it’s safe to remove the disk.

So I really recommend you to find a temporary disk (or buy a new one) and copy everything to it and format your disk as a Linux file system of your choice and move your files to it, before you get a real headache with NTFS (talking out of experience).

Also note that, it’s possible for NTFS disks become inaccessible if fastboot option is enabled for Windows on BIOS, if so disable it.

Uhh, this is just the very first Ubuntu on VM. Default config.

You can try something like antiX but it won’t do good as a desktop. I use my netbook as a home server with pi-hole in it.

I think you replied to wrong thread. :)