@retronianneThe laptop was delivered yesterday. Early. I was delighted.
I spent most of the evening yesterday hopping and jumping and formatting...and in the end, I landed back towards the familiar.
I'm still delighted. :) 
@retronianneI only had one hiccup with the Mint install, and it's a common Intel GPU panel refresh issue that takes a quick kernel disable.
Everything else is working so smoothly. I'm shocked how things are going (so far); I've had some rough experiences with Linux and laptops in the past, and the standard hardware of this machine has helped a ton (so far). :)
@retronianneWhat's y'all's favorite Linux music player? :) 
@reallychris@tech.lgbt@retronianne audacious is more or less doing the job for me. qmmp is worth a shout too. i did some searching, because i wanted something simple, that had global keys, and notifications. these two were the closest i got. but it turns out it's really easy to write your own notifications. i love foss.