Nice! The outdated kernel was one of the main reasons why I never recommended using Mint. Now, if they can do something about their other outdated packages like Mesa - and switch to Wayland - I'd be happy to recommend Mint.
You don't.
Long answer: https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/you-dont-need-to-install-an-antivirus-app-on-your-phone
I have an M1 MBA and it runs Asahi just fine, for the most part. And it should suit you well too, since you're only going to use basic apps. Even if there are some limitations currently, you could always run Linux inside a VM such as UTM.
But may I ask why do you want to run Linux, when you're going to use only those three apps? Objectively, Linux wouldn't be offering you much in your use case, and in fact if battery life is your primary concern, you'd be better off sticking with macOS. Another option could be a Chromebook.
I am! I run it both on my gaming PC and laptop.
But it doesn't seem like a "typical" distro for a daily driver? How does Bazzite for example differ from Nobara which is another gaming-oriented distro?
Well, for starters, if you get the Bazzite-deck edition, your PC boots straight into Steam's game mode - in this mode, everything runs thru gamescope so you get all the awesome benefits like being able to use FSR even with games that don't support it, HDR and more. You get a console-like experience on PC, and it's awesome.
Another cool thing about this mode is that all your updates - including OS, Flatpak, firmware/BIOS, container, Nix, pip etc - all of it is presented as if it's a Steam update like in SteamOS - and it's automatic too, and it doesn't interrupt your gaming experience. Basically a unified update backend and frontend, which is awesome.
Compared to Fedora/Nobara, one advantage this has is that the updates are image based and atomic, so when you reboot, the new update goes live instantly so there's no wait-time. Another advantage is that your previous image is available in the GRUB menu, so in case the update broke something, you can always boot from the previous image - no need to even restore anything, no need to edit your fstab etc (unlike btrfs snapshot restores where the subvolid changes). And you can also pin "good" images to your GRUB menu (and I highly recommend doing that), so you can always fall back to a known good version. This came in handy on my laptop recently where after one of the Feb updates I was experiencing some weird graphics corruption in game mode, but thanks to image pinning I always had a working image to fall back to. Also, the rebase feature allows you to go back and forth between 90 days of images (stored on github), so it's easy to switch between various versions for testing. The rebase is also interesting because with just a single command you can switch between any other Fedora Atomic distro, so if you're bored of Bazzite or you want to try out a new DE, it's just one command to switch. And with pinning, you can always switch back instantly.
Finally, there's the whole immutability aspect. Personally I'm ambivalent on this, but the fact that it allows image/atomic updates (with easy rollbacks/rebases), I think of it more as a convenience - especially on a gaming-oriented machine, where I just wanna jump straight into my games without worrying about updates and broken systems.
So having used Fedora, Nobara, and finally Bazzite, I can highly recommend Bazzite as a daily driver - and it's 100% worth switching. AMA.
Opera also invented the browser Speed Dial, which was super handy back in the day.
But most importantly, Opera invented tabs, or at least the concept of tabbed browsing. I recall using Opera on Windows 3.11 and for the longest time, even during the Win 9x era, no other app used tabs.
In addition to mouse gestures, they had customisable keyboard shortcuts for practically every browser feature, again, something which very few apps bothered with.
The page compression built into Opera Mini was a life saver on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices back in the 2G/GPRS era. Opera Mini loaded pages blindingly quick and there was nothing else like it on the market, even leading up to early Android days.
but thankfully he started Vivaldi which feels like the spiritual successor.
Too bad he made the unfortunate decision of going with the Chromium engine instead of Gecko, or even making their own engine. I would've loved to use Vivalidi if it weren't for that fact.
No, it's an actual attack. But we don't know for sure if it's being exploited actively in the wild. This vulnerability has existed ever since PCs adopted UEFI (~2006).
It'll really depend on your local job market. I was on a serious job hunt earlier this year and I couldn't find a single Linux job which asked for LFCS certs. There were a couple which asked for Red Hat certs though. Of course, this could be specific to where I live, so I'd recommend looking at some popular job sites for where you live (+ remote jobs too) and see how many, if any, ask for LFCS, and you'd get your answer.
Should I focus more on dev ops? Security? Straight SysAdmin?
From what I've seen so far, the days of "traditional" Linux sysadmin roles are numbered, if not long gone already - it's all mostly DevOps-y stuff. Same with traditional security, these days it's more about DevSecOps.
As a modern Linux sysadmin, the technologies you should be looking at would be Ansible, Kubernetes, Terraform, containers (Docker mainly, but also Podman/LXD), GitOps, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concepts and tools.
Some Red Hat shops may also ask for OpenShift, Ansible Tower, Satellite etc experience. IBM shops also use a lot of IBM tools such as IBM Could Paks, Multicloud Management, and AIOps/Watson etc.
And finally there's all the "cloud" stuff like AWS, Azure, GCP specific things - and they have their own terminologies that you'd need to know and understand (eg "S3", "Lambda" etc) and they have their own certs to go with it. I suspect a "cloud" cert will net you more jobs than LFCS.
So as you'd probably be thinking by now, all of the above isn't something you'd know from just using desktop Linux. Of course, desktop Linux experience is certainly useful for understanding some of the core concepts and how it all works under the hood, but unfortunately that experience alone just isn't going to cut it if you're out looking for a job.
As I mentioned before, start looking for jobs in your area/relevant to you and look at the technologies they're asking for, note down the terms which appear most frequently and the certs they're asking for, and start preparing for them. That is, assuming it's something you want to work with in the future.
Personally, I'm not a big fan all this new tech (I'm fine with Ansible and containers, but don't like the industry's dependency on proprietary techs like Docker Desktop, Amazon or Red Hat's stuff). I just wanted to work on pure Linux, with all the all standard POSIX/GNU tools and DEs that we're familiar with, but sadly those sort of jobs don't really exist anymore.
It's strange seeing "kills" and "Android" in the same sentence without any mention of "Google".
Just use Termux and install the openssh package. You can also install mosh, which is better than vanilla ssh.
become so inconsistent
Your title implies that it was consistent at some point, but it wasn't. Android updates were never consistent. In fact, it's actually become more consistent in recent years, since the introduction of Project Treble. Most mainstream flagships now offer 4 years of updates, with some manufacturers even offering 5 years (Google and some Samsung flagships).
Next to fine arts college
Hopefully, this isn't their handiwork...
I wish they did this a decade ago, back when they tried to crowdfund the Ububtu phone - and subsequently scrapped all plans just because they didn't meet the target. There was already a big dev scene in the community with people porting Ubuntu to Android phones - they could've easily partnered up with them, like how OnePlus partnered up with CyanogenMod a year later. I mean, Canonical did raise $12mil through the campaign, which showed there was not only plenty of interest, but also plenty of people willing to actually fund it.
The problem now is Google and Apple have taken such a deep foothold on the market, it may be a bit too late. After the disappointment of the scrapped Ububtu Phone and subsequent loss of trust in Canonical over the years, I can't help but be sceptical about this whole thing. I'll celebrate if and when we have an actual, usable, flagship device in our hands, and not something gimped like the Librem 5 or the Pinephone.