It should work without any issues. AMD is perfectly fine. They are among the main contributors to the Linux kernel and their products work just fine. In general, you should be worried only about nVidia cards, which this laptop doesn't have. Even these are working much better nowadays.

Mozilla has already fulfilled as my hopes. They release truly free software of the highest quality. Firefox is an excellent browser and ecosystem and thinderbird is an excellent email client (or so I hear - I use only web-based email). My dream is for them to remain faithful to their own principles.

Fedora Core (the first one) was my first love in Linux. I tried SuSE before that but wasn't as polished as it is now. That was more than 20 years ago!

MX Linux. It is Debian with setup and tools I really want but would be too lazy to prepare in one go. Love it as much as I love Debian.

MX Linux. It's exactly how I'd set up Debian if I wasn't too lazy. Although, I've gone back to Debian after Bookwarm was released. I love it but miss MX

You have a point here indeed. But it is much easier to create a CLI tool that combines the updates of all systems rather than destroying the incredible things that flatpak and pip offer. A five-line bach script would do. Although, a reliable distro would probably want to rely on something much more elegant and harder to break. For Fedora specifically, the python-based dnf tool should be straightforward to be extended to do that. Perhaps the Debian apt tool has a lot of functionality to carry on and may be harder to do. In the essence of unix philosophy and modular approach, it should be a separate tool. I'm looking forward to that too.

I know that a lot of people share the same thoughts with you but I respectfully disagree. If you want your system to be updated only with your apt/yum/dnf program, then just don't install anything useing snap/flatpak/etc. Sure, you will not have all the apps available in the repos, which was also the case in the past before these systems. Back then, your only option was to compile from source, which was more work-intensive than flatpaks/appimages/snaps. And updating was also much more complicated. Therefore, unless you wanted something really special, you'd stick to your repos. Flatpaks allow developers to distribute their software (and users to install it) in a less labour-intensive manner for the developer. Compiling and testing your app for Debian, Fedora, Arch, SuSE, MX-Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Mint DE, Gentoo, and all the other popular distros is an impossible task for small developers. Flatpaks was a godsend for them and for the users who don't want to compile from source. Now, you can argue that we shouldn't have all these systems (flatpak, snap, appimage, docker, etc...) but one would be OK. And again I will disagree. One of the most important aspects of FOSS is diversity. Embrace it even with its drawbacks. It would require a much longer post to explain this and others have done it already better than I would.

I think the case is crystal clear even to someone who has no technical knowledge. The question is whether the judge will be swayed by the lobbying power of the Big Tech

Either Linux or GNU/Linux is OK to me. It's the practice that makes the difference. While I mostly use Debian, which defines itself as GNU/Linux and I appreciate every aspect of it, I recognise that Arch Linux (which drops the GNU) has a much healthier approach to free software than Red Hat (recently at least), which defines itself as GNU/Linux but adds clauses to RHEL which are against the spirit of free software. I prefer using GNU/Linux because, as a statement, respects things that are important to me. Of course, I am totally cool with other people using any term they feel more comfortable with.

This appears to be true on the surface but is not accurate. I am a structural engineer and when people need to do something with their buildings, the engineers (structural, mechanical, fire, etc.) and the architects need the plans or at least a survey. If a side has the plans and the authority on the plans, that side has huge leverage over the building. Fortunately, this is never the case with buildings. Plans are considered public information. It would be so much better if the same applied to software.

So true! My parents got me the C64 when I had no idea about computers. I loved the Spectrum+ my buddy had at the time but always wanted the C128 another friend of mine got. My parents eventually upgraded my computer to an Amstrad CPC6128 when they saw that I was actually programming in BASIC. I learned a lot from that computer too, e.g. Fortran, Pascal, a bit of Z80 assemly (the last one was horrible!)

I just googled the conversion of the price from 1985 to today based on inflation and then googled the exchange rate between the current value in GBP to USD.