I kinda get it in this instance. It has similar energy to people that are leftists and want to use the US flag. Bald eagle is only used as symbol in US, so I am not a fan either.

I really liked how it was implemented in the past. Not as a part of the username but as a “badge”. Shame it is now gone, having it as part of the username is worse.

If you only do regular desktop stuff or just some light gaming, you will probably be fine with integrated GPU. But beware, your CPU does need to have one (not all ones do). Also, when you are using an integrated GPU you are dedicating part of your RAM for that GPU so in the end you will have less RAM available, usually it is something like 2 GB, but it is something to keep in mind.

To be honest, I would probably avoid latest GPU stuff, most of them are not worth it in my opinion. Too expensive and too power hungry. But it depends on your options and what you want to play.

Second hand is usually fine. Even if it was used for crypto, if it was properly cooled and taken care for (although that is usually hard to know for sure).

You will have the easiest time with AMD GPUs, they are basically plug and play. The only reason for going with nvidia would be their proprietary stuff like DLSS and better ray tracing. Or if you do some work that could benefit from CUDA (machine learning, 3d modeling).

One thing to consider there is that CPUs are much more efficient now. So if it is a really old laptop, it might consume quite a low of power.

Yes, it is only for playing around. Basically, it is a fully functional environment that can also be used to install it on your computer. So when you are done playing around, you can just use it to install it to your computer. It will be a fresh installation with no changes you made during your time playing with USB installation. Most distros nowadays have nice graphical installer, so you can do what you want with your hard drive, wipe it clean, install it alongside your current OS.

Most of the time, you don't really have to worry about hardware compatibility, especially if you are using desktop. There are some things that work better than others (like AMD GPU as opposed to Nvidia) but in most cases both are fine. As others already suggested, probably the easiest way to get started is to just grab a USB drive and put Linux on it. You can then boot onto it and play around in that installation, also with this you can check that your hardware is compatible.

Other than that, I would recommend just trying it. Look into distros already there are some good suggestion with Mint, PopOS, Fedora. Try different Desktop Environments (basically how everything looks) there are two major ones KDE and GNOME and some other ones. Try them and see what works best for you. Overall, I wouldn't worry about it too much, especially with your usage any distro should work for you.

Lol, nice.

Exactly if something I want more telemetry in my system that is more easily accessible. I can't imagine living for example without SMART.

I always actually wonder if that is an actual issue. Apart from some duplicate effort with things like packaging for different distros (which is something that distro maintainers do anyway) I don't really get this point. For me, this only makes sense for proprietary packages and not for open source.

Apart from some small differences in how you install packages, using most distros is basically the same.

I am always confused by this point because I see it repeated everywhere, but never with a good argument supporting it.

Who says the distribution of glibc 2.3.4 you and I have are the same? It only depends on where you got it from. And even then we can build it with different flags etc. Not really sure how rust is worse in that one. On the contrary, usually when you build software in C/C++ you dynamically link. So you have no idea what version of libraries someone is using or where they got it. In that sense, Rust's approach is actually safer.

Sure, but the communication is still encrypted. Apart from the sense of security, it is at least as safe as just http. So I find it funny that when you access http site you don't get a warning about the site being unsafe, but with a self-signed certificate you do.

Funny that http sites are treated as safer than https with self-signed certificate.