Congrats!

Depending on your situation, most of your issues can be avoided by not owning a smartphone. It’s extreme (by today’s standards, at least), but it does work. I ditched my smartphone back in 2017 for a cheap flip phone. I can find spare parts on eBay easily. My car is older, so there is no SaaS crap in it. If I need to keep in touch with someone, we can use SMS, call each other or meet in real life. I use a Linux laptop for banking/browsing the web and I keep a physical GPS in my car in case of emergency.

and I agree with you. Privacy is pretty much gone already.

I keep a GPS in my car in case of emergency, but I try to plan my trips ahead by memorising landmarks on OSM. As a species, we are losing our navigation skills.

As long as automatic playback is not turned on by default!

How much of a PIA is it to install Linux on a Chromebook? I’m looking for a small laptop and Chromebooks are the perfect size.

Linux Mint’s software manager is not bad.

Same here. Mandrake 8.2 was a buggy mess, but I have fond memories of it.

How do you close/minimise the windows?

Serious question: What is your opinion on avoiding arguments altogether? The older I get, the less I feel like arguing.

Invidious or Freetube if she’s on a personal computer.

Non-native speaker here. What are the disadvantages of being straightforward? In my native language, it is considered more efficient and polite to be to the point. I have worked with Americans in the past, and I have noticed that they are not straightforward.

I use Debian with a patched version of motif window manager. The 90s never ended: