If your apprenticeship is going to require you to run software on your personal computer, please check to ensure the software will run under Linux. I'm not a big fan of Windows, but I'm even less of a fan of a computer that won't do what you need to do with it.
I haven't used an email client on my machines for a while, and the last one I used was ClawsMail. I have used Thunderbird (and a few others), and I do think there's less messing around with T-bird than with ClawsMail.
The friendliest Linux distro for a newbie is probably Linux Mint. Any distro will give you access to what's under the hood; those that require you to get your hands dirty during the installation process might be considered less newbie-friendly. The friendliest Desktop Environment is a matter of...
I use Fedora, Ubuntu, and Manjaro. I like to be close to the bleeding edge. Mate desktop on all three. With dev versions (Fedora, Ubuntu), come the more than occasional breakages, but I keep at least one fully working at all times.
Hi Michael,
Never having ventured into the realm of RAID, I can't offer any suggestions there. But I do use soft-links. Basically, they're like shortcuts in Windows.
I've actually been using Linux for about 16 years now, and finally came across this site. Started with Linux about 2001 - checked out a copy of the Linux Bible from the local library and installed Red Hat from the included CDs. Managed to accidentally wipe Windows more than once in those early...