That’s your reason

USB<–>USB dongle?! >:(

HP

Inkjet

Nix has just been removed from the university computers here. They admit it’s nice, but the new (smaller) team just doesn’t have the time to create the packages themselves. That’s the flip side.

when it comes to cloud, servers, apps, IOT

I would say that’s all you want to stay away from at the beginning. 😁

If you want to learn how to program (C++, Jave, etc.), the most hardware demanding task is using the browser. So, your requirements couldn’t be any lower. Any toaster from the past say 8 years will do fine.

E.g. have a look the the Dell Latitude 7480. You can get it second hand in really good shape upwards from 200 EUR. It’s well built, well repairable, works well with Linux and the battery lasts a day.

Forget about GPUs. (iGPUs are sufficient, dGPUs are expensive, unnecessary for your use-case and draw lots of battery.)

P.S. And have a look at Arch Linux.

P.P.S. You might also have a look at war games.

I have a folder of invoices for articles with warranty I bought (PDFs). I can tag the files with their warranty expiration date using xattrs.