On NewEgg they are like $42 each, just flash and put Linux on. The limited space is a big factor, but with an SD slot and get say a 64Gb external, you can slap nearly all the software and media you'd want.

You'd be surprised the amount of software available. LibreOffice, Gimp, GCC, Scite, ffmpeg and you can do a ton of stuff.

Windows 10 Education, last updated in April 2019. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Both Microsoft (surface 3) and Intel (Pc Stick) themselves shipped a ton of devices with 2Gb of RAM and Windows 10, although fair to say, the first iterations of Win10 were not so resource intensive.
Heck, most old Atom powered netbooks from 2010 shipped with 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 cripple edition.

Crap, forgot GOG merges posts...

Windows 8.1 + MX Linux + Bohdhi Linux (this ssd will be removed soon) in the main desktop

Windows 8.1 on the second Desktop

Windows 10 + Linux Mint on the Laptop

Windows 10 on the Tablet

Linux Mint.

Well i usually go for refrubished ones; Otherwise new ones are like $300.

Though NewEgg primarily does US only so can't really help there.

Is the Fedora release upgrade just about running some kind of "sudo dnf release-upgrade" command and waiting it do its stuff, or do you have to install the new version manually from clean table, maybe keeping the /home on a separate partition so that it isn't wiped out etc.?

Release upgrade seems to be painful and problematic in many cases, and e.g. Linux Mint states they don't recommend it but instead people should do a clean install for a new Mint release.

With Ubuntu (server) I have done some release-upgrades successfully, but even there I had some odd cases where e.g. grub became broken or something, and the system became unbootable, and certain extra steps were needed for the release upgrade to go through.

With RHEL/Centos/OEL, I don't recall if I've ever done a release upgrade. I recall at least at one point trying to figure it out (maybe it was from Centos 6 to 7, or 7 to 8, not sure), but ended up with the view that it can't be done securely, and is unsupported.

So if it a similar pain in the neck in Fedora, then the short release cycle is a bit of a problem for me. I would probably look for Manjaro or OpenSUSE with a rolling release model instead in that case... Too bad Manjaro doesn't like Secure Boot, so it was not an option to install on this laptop as dualboot, so I went with Rocky Linux 9 instead as it doesn't mind Secure Boot, nor that the Windows partition is encrypted with Bitlocker (Linux Mint doesn't like Bitlocker).

If you mean the so-called Linux-installers of GOG games, frankly I don't know as I don't use them even in Linux Mint (I tried the Two Worlds Linux installer in Mint, and in the end it was less of a headache to get the Windows version run in WINE... and I think the "Linux version" was just that, the Windows version wrapped into WINE or something).

Ubuntu (or Mint) is more foolproof both for GOG and Steam gaming as I think Ubuntu is what Steam and GOG target to. RHEL-derivatives may need some extra work or workarounds, case by case. I presume though that setting up WINE and running Windows apps/games with it is not really harder in RHEL than in Ubuntu (I haven't actually tried this yet on Rocky, only in Mint).

For instance installing the mere Steam client in Rocky Linux needed more research. In Linux Mint and Ubuntu, you just head to www.steampowered.com and start the Linux client installation from there.

With Rocky 9, I googled and found some instructions that by default Rocky Linux is missing some dependencies that Steam needs, and there were rather convoluted instructions how to get those dependencies to Rocky from some other Linux distro. (?)

However, then I found alternative instructions that there is a flatpak-version of Steam available, and installing it was simple and straightforward, It works great too, but there is a slight audio problem at least in Team Fortress 2, I can't hear some of the announcement sounds (the female announcer who e.g. counts down the start or end of a round; some of her announcements still work though?). I don't know if I have some wrong setting or what is the problem, but for now that is not a biggie. Not sure if I noticed any similar issues in Portal 2...

My next task for Rocky Linux is to install WINE, maybe Lutris, to play some GOG games. I admit Steam has an upper hand here, when you have set the client up, installing and playing Steam games doesn't really differ from the Windows experience (for those Steam games that support Linux).

It's pretty much just dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=38 then dnf system-upgrade reboot. In some instances you may have to take extra steps but I don't think I ever needed that. They only test going forward up to two releases at a time though, so if you're running an older version, you might have to do a few steps.

So far the upgrades have been reliable for me. I remember one instance on my father's machine when it failed to boot after upgrade, but that was many many years ago. He's also used Fedora for a long time now.

I don't know if I've been just lucky or if breakage is uncommon. Or maybe the fact that I wait a few months before upgrading to the latest release plays a role? I'm not even sure whether that affects it, but I would assume they fix any known upgrade issues.

Yeah Ubuntu breaking left and right was a thing in the past (family members used to use it, and of course I had to fix it when it broke -- which was far too often). I haven't seriously touched Ubuntu in a very long time, it left a horrible taste.

I'm disgusted by how complicated they've made booting Linux though. Imo bootloader could very well be something you install once and never touch afterwards. GRUB blowing up is really lame and yes I've experienced it.. (not on Fedora, but Debian -- another distro I won't bother with anymore after a couple times that both ended badly.)

I use W10 (Iot LTSC always) on my main rig alongside Arch Linux. On my laptop I use W10 too because of the HDR (Linux still lacks support to it and I have it connected to a 4K TV for movies and some games). And for my phone I use Android.

Even though I would love to make the full switch to Linux on my main rig, there are still some things holding me back, such as my professors requiring some Windows only software for their classes and some multiplayer games not working on Linux (although I'm thinking on using my laptop for this purpose).

Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, didn't make the jump to 11 yet.