After 30 years of computers I'm finding them scary again

[bucolic_frolic]

3. HD gave me many months of warnings

That part was easy. Installing Linux was a lot of learning, but tolerable I guess. What really made quirks was the phaseout of Vista. They said it would have security vulnerabilities. But it actually stopped working on various sites at greatly different times. Few sites explained it was an OS incompatibility problem. It just failed to load, or gave errors. Some sites don't support Linux.

I sure agree with you on the OS. Upgrades drive me crazy, like with VLC. But code keeps changing, new programs/apps invented, and the OS has to keep up.

I don't want an SSD. Sticking with HDD. Hope they keep making legacy HDD's because there will be demand for replacements for decades.