This made me wonder, are there any mechanical switches that can be switched by a smart something? As in, a regular switch where the user always has mechanical control, even when the smart system is down, but that optionally can be switched by a smart sytem, state reading is optional.
2009 maybe doesn’t sound super long ago, but it’s 17 years, that’s almost the midpoint between now and when operating systems became mainstream.
There’s plenty of perfectly fine distributions out there. Mint is an easy choice, easy to get started with, big community that probably already has answered the questions you might have and otherwise you can ask them. Many more gaming focused people use Bazzite, not sure what it offers on top of a basic, well working environment.
The Nvidea graphics card could cause issues since drivers tend to not be supported well. Again, you’re most likely to find help for the bigger distros such as Mint and Bazzite.
Regardless of which distro you choose, just try it and see how it goes. Dual boot can be a nice starting point (but make sure you get the partitioning right before installing anything!).
I imagine them being something along the lines of ‘Government organisation X moves from Photoshop to free open source alternative’ or if a journalist is feeling funny ‘Government organisation X moves from paid image manipulation software (PIMP) to GIMP’.
Anyways, I think it’s only a minor issue limited to English speaking countries, and only a issue for people who already have issues