If it's just Crunchyroll doing this, you can disable auto-play for it (or just disable it for all sites, IMO automatic playback of media is pretty annoying).

Another alternative is to use Auto Tab Discard, which automatically suspends tabs which are inactive after x seconds. This also helps save memory and CPU usage, and also greatly benefits laptop users. So if you tend to leave your browser open and have dozens of tabs in the background, I'd highly recommend getting this.

Indeed. But I think some confusion will still remain as long as the ntfs-3g FUSE driver is still included by distros. Because right now, you have to explicitly specify the filesystem type as ntfs3 if you want to use the new in-kernel driver, otherwise it would use ntfs-3g. And most guides on the web still haven't been updated to use ntfs3 in the fstab, so I'm afraid this confusion will continue to persist for some time.

Here's the TL;DR from Phoronix:

#AMD

• AMD P-State Preferred Core handling for modern Ryzen systems. This is for leveraging ACPI CPPC data between CPU cores for improving task placement on AMD Ryzen systems for cores that can achieve higher frequencies and also helping in hybrid selection between say Zen 4 and Zen 4C cores. This AMD Preferred Core support has been in development since last year.

• Performance gains on AMD 4th Gen EPYC

• AMD FRU Memory Poison Manager merged along with other work as part of better supporting the AMD MI300 series.

• AMD has continued upstreaming more RDNA3+ refresh and RDNA4 graphics hardware support into the AMDGPU driver.

#Intel

• Intel Xeon Max gains in some AI workloads

• Intel FRED was merged for Flexible Return and Event Delivery with future Intel CPUs to overhaul CPU ring transitions.

• Reworked x86 topology code for better handling Intel Core hybrid CPUs.

• Intel Fastboot support is now enabled across all supported graphics generations.

• Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" tuning that can yield nice performance improvements for those using new Intel laptops.

• Continued work on the experimental Intel Xe DRM kernel graphics driver that Intel is aiming to get ready in time for Xe2 / Lunar Lake.

Video, Filesystem & Network

• Support for larger frame-buffer console fonts with modern 4K+ displays.

• Dropping the old NTFS driver.

• Improved case-insensitive file/folder handling.

• Performance optimizations for Btrfs.

• More efficient discard and improved journal pipelining for Bcachefs.

• FUSE passthrough mode finally made it to the mainline kernel.

• More online repair improvements for XFS.

• Much faster exFAT performance when engaging the "dirsync" mount option.

• Many networking improvements.

Full summary here: https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-69-features/

For #4, you could use WinApps - just pair it with a debloated version of Windows (like Tiny11) and you won't even notice any performance impact. I made a custom build of Tiny11 core and it's idle RAM usage is just 605 MB, and CPU usage close to 0%. When I launch a .docx on Linux, it loads up Word as a RemoteApp in less than a second and it sorta feels like a native app. It's all pretty seamless once you get it going.

If you are going down this route btw, I highly recommend using freeRDP v3 (which you can install from the AUR), since it's got a ton of improvements over the old 2.x versions.

Aurora australis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, at this part of the country, localized entirely in the southern hemisphere?!

I haven't heard of Hot Shot, but 200-400GB seems like reasonable usage to me. Especially taking into account 4K streaming, and stuff like video game downloads being 100+GB, that figure actually would seem pretty conservative IMO.

IMO you shouldn't look at it as "should I become an x user", because that sort of implies you're getting married to that distro. Instead, you should be asking, "should I use x to solve y?" For instance, I use RHEL, Debian (Raspbian), Fedora (Asahi), Fedora Atomic (Bazzite) and Arch. I also use Windows, macOS and FreeDOS. All solve different needs and problems. There's no rule saying you should only stick to one distro/OS use whatever suits your needs, hardware and environment the best. :)

Because MIUI deviates from stock Android so much that it often causes unexpected behaviour and bugs. So it's easier for developers to just say they don't support it, instead of putting up with negative reviews and complaints.

Came across a new vegan restaurant in Welly called September, which is turning into one of my go-to joints. So far I've had their Mapo Tofu, Laksa and Stir Fried Veggies with Tofu, and they've all been top-notch. And unlike Aunty Mena's, their food isn't bland - and when I ask them to make it spicy, they make it proper Asian-spicy, which is awesome. 10/10 would recommend.

Nice, welcome to the club! Been using a ThinkPad Z13 for the past couple of years exclusively with Linux (Fedora Atomic) and it has been an excellent experience, with everything working OOTB and decent battery life too. I do have a copy of Windows installed in a VM, but use it only for dev/test stuff.

What are corporate users using?

Corporates are using ThinkPads, HP EliteBooks and MacBooks. OS being Windows, macOS mainly. Linux on workstations is pretty rare - mainly used by developers - and the distro being Ububtu LTS (which I do not recommend).

Since you want to use Linux, go for a ThinkPad. There are more Linux-friendly laptops of course (like Framework and System76) but I believe none of them offer corporate-levels of stability and build-quality like ThinkPads yet - as you have experienced yourself with System76.

Main pro-tip is to avoid systems that use nVidia cards - they're often responsible for buggy suspend/resume in Linux, and can break your OS sometimes when you do an OS/kernel upgrade. So if you're after stability, avoid nVidia like the plague.

For the docking station, I've had good experiences with the HP Thunderbolt Dock G4. The initial releases were in fact a bit buggy with suspend/resume, but HP have released subsequent firmware updates to fix those issues. In fact, HP have been really good at providing regular firmware updates for those docks, and the best part is that it's on the LVFS too - which means the firmware can be updated directly in Linux using fwupd. A lot of vendors don't bother updating docking stations - and even fewer update them via LVFS, so this is something you might definitely want to look into.

Finally, for distro recommendations, I would recommend a Fedora Atomic distro since they're immutable, and rollbacks are as easy as just selecting the previous image in the boot menu. Given your requirements, I'd recommed Bluefin - specifically the Developer Experience version, since it comes with virtualisation tools OOTB.

For reference, I mainly use Bazzite (another variant of Fedora Atomic) on my pure-AMD ThinkPad Z13, and haven't had any issues with suspend/resume, external monitors, or virtualisation dev/test workflows. There's virtually no overnight battery drain either when suspending. My system also supports Opal2, so my drive is encrypted transparently to the OS, with virtually no performance overhead. It's also nice not having to muck around with LUKS and the complexities around it. I use this system for both work and personal use (gaming), and it's been a great experience so far - both software and hardware. Happy to answer any questions you may have.