I have an eight-year-old laptop that needs replacing and I’m paralyzed. What are the most reliable ones now? Do I need a desktop for CAD? Pros and cons of operating systems (and where do I find them?) Browsers ditto? Where do I find answers that aren’t just product marketing?
Laptops haven’t gotten that much better in the past 8 years. The one I’m using right now was made in 2011. Install Debian on your 8yo laptop and you are good to go. Question is though, what do you want to do with it? CAD? You mean like for 3D printing, or something more serious? You don’t need a desktop per se, but a big monitor plugged into the laptop can help.
While I agree with most of what you said, I don’t think it’s a great idea to recommend Linux to someone who appears to be out of his depth in terms of computers.
That’s my concern. I appreciate the hands-on aspects of Linux, but I’m not sure I want to learn it.
Distributions like Linux Mint and Ubuntu don’t have much of a learning curve at all these days. If you’re curious, you could install them on an USB drive and play around with it without installing.
I’ve been using Linux for well over a decade now, but I’m not an advanced user at all. I mostly just like it because it just works.
None of the industry standard CAD software work natively with Linux. Just not worth it for that purpose