I kinda like a little thingy that has a USB plug on one end under a cap, and a salt shaker on the other. Or maybe like a little hot sauce shaker, if we’re moving away from salt.

Yeah, look at image before title, wondered if it was a salt shaker and what language uses kalt for salt.

Hrm, USB stick salt shaker…

A partition for each thing you might want to change the size of is my rule, or to be able to wipe independently of the others.

I usually prefer lvm over actual partitions, since it does a better job letting me think about volumes as opposed to devices.

Boot gets a partition because it’s basically required. Home gets one so I can reinstall without mucking things up. The database directory gets one for similar reasons, a d because I might need to scale it up. The system itself gets one because it’s most likely to get wiped or need more space.
Most of these are actually lvm volumes.

Weird, sucks you had a rough time. I’m mostly perplexed about the network card issue, and the monitors. I haven’t had any trouble like that in more than a decade. I’ve honestly actually had more trouble with a new install of windows failing to detect hardware than Linux recently.

Probably all you need to do is check to make sure things look right, and actually test it.

I can’t think of anything else that would be common that you’d want to check. If you’re running weird virtualization setups on your laptop you might have to do more. :P

There are different schemes that different distros use. Some user partition id, some use fire system id, and some use device serial number and partition index.

It might work, but probably not without a little tweaking.

A lot of things will reference drive identifiers or drive path to know where to mount them. These things don’t get copied by dd.

Ubuntu, mint, fedora, Manjaro are all pretty much in the same class, and it’s largely irrelevant which you pick. They’re all supported, have decent UI for most of what you want to do, and have good documentation for how to do it.

It’s not too difficult to change distros without having to move all your data once you’re switched, so it doesn’t matter too much, and you’ll probably try a couple before finding the one with the best menus for you.

Yes. Most things use pcre, or Perl Compatible Regular Expressions, but there are other flavors. Usually they lack features or have slightly different syntax.

https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Multi_002dVolume-Archives.html

You might end up splitting files across drives, but I don’t think you’re likely to find a more “out of the box” solution. You might combine it with the compression flags to make sure things fit, and don’t forget to number your drives!

For the most part, yeah. If you’re looking for a laptop the older you go, the more “boring” you’ll want.
Plain form factors and the like.

Sometimes, very rarely, weird laptop keyboards need special drivers that don’t always get baked into Linux, so it can be a pain. Same for older “premium” sound stuff in an older laptop.
Doesn’t mean that it will have problems, just that you’re more likely to.
Old midrange Lenovo or Dell laptops tend to be a staple for Linux. They also contribute to Linux, so their stuff tends to just work. Contrast with apple, where getting it to work with Linux is a hard-mode hobby for some people.

Base hardware stuff is essentially all compatible.

https://a.co/d/1exYlgM

That’s basically an example of a standard laptop you might try to put Linux on and expect effortless success. (It’s newer because that’s what came up, but it’s an example of the trend).
Note the lack of anything that makes you go “ah, a marketable feature to highlight or differentiate”.

https://a.co/d/iRv02YV

This one probably works fine, but I’d have some concerns about that touch screen and things not playing well with any sensors that make the folding action turn off the screen.
It might work fine, but it’s the type of thing that can take a bit of fiddling to get working, or just doesn’t because people don’t care to port the functionality over.

In general you should be fine. Might have some issues if you want 32 bit.

Most likely difficulty is if you get something with “weird” peripherals that has gone from support.

A laptop with touch sensitive buttons that was only made by Dell for one model in 2008 is something where you might have difficulty finding support.