pelya

Ah, faulty hardware.

I got more open to prebuilt PCs when I could not upgrade any single component of my home PC, the motherboard still had AGP slot. It is also an option when you are buying a PC-in-a-monitor build, upgrading anything there is a fool’s errand. But for regular PCs it was considerably cheaper ten years ago to buy every component separately, and then they just click in place like LEGOs. The chances of burning your custom-built PC are like, you need serious crab hands to mount it that poorly.

Good advice, but if you’re buying a new motherboard, why would you care for replacing it’s components? Choose the one that works properly out of the box.

It’s just an overpriced FreeBSD.

AI is currently all the rage. I know a guy who does neural networks training, and it’s the closest job to Pokemon trainer that you can have. He does not know any programming language, it’s all purely data processing, and it requires a heavy math background. It’s still an 8 hours per day job in a corporate environment, and a half of it is fixing his computing farm, because there’s no dedicated sysadmin for replacing burned videocards.

Another math-heavy option is signal processing. I’ve worked in a company which produces wireless communication hardware, it’s like 200 people, and there were two signal processing guys who patented an algorithm which increases data throughput by something like 0.5% in some specific high-noise scenarios, they are listed together with CEO on their website About page. That said, all the easier tasks for signal processing are already done, we’re already at the theoretical limit of Shannon theorem, so you’ll only be making gradual improvements.

I would also recommend cryptography research, but it requires a lot of coding knowledge, even if you’re not writing any actual code, and paranoia is pretty much a requirement.

Check for WiFi and Bluetooth drivers compatibility first. Every x86_64 motherboard should work with Linux well, as in, it will boot and all USB/PCI Express/SATA ports will work. What you should care are peripherals soldered onto the motherboard, like WiFi, Bluetooth, extra Ethernet ports, ten years ago I would say soundcards but nowadays all integrated soundcards are supported, some motherboards have strange ports like Firewire which might not be supported, integrated videocards are now soldered directly onto CPU and not on motherboards like before so HDMI ports should all work on any motherboard.

And yes, as the other commenter said, check that firmware update does not require some Windows program, and could be done only with USB drive and selecting some option in the BIOS/UEFI menu.

Just look at those nested parentheses. A true sign of (pedantic) greatness, when a person needs to clarify something in their earlier clarification.