The propaganda worked. I bought a Thinkpad, the thigh highs are on the way, penguin stickers are already here. Now it's time to actually put Linux on my machine.
I'm a bit lost on which version of mint to put on the T480. It's an i7 8650u, 16gb RAM, 256gb SSD (will eventually be upgrading the RAM, SSD, and display). My question is, is the t480 "old" by Linux standards? From what I've gathered cinnamon is the standard version. Edge is for new (?) hardware that may not be fully compatible with cinnamon. MATE is for old/lower power hardware that can't handle the demand of cinnamon and xfce is for even older/slower hardware.
I've been running in circles all morning trying to find experiences of people with a T480 who are running mint and which version they're using. Old is apparently 3+ years according to various articles trying to convince me to upgrade and I haven't found much on what is considered old hardware for Linux. As someone who hasn't bought a computer in nearly a decade, a quad core processor with 16 gigs of ram is ridiculously powerful. My last computer was a $90 shitbox that I got on clearance from Walmart in 2016 to do online lessons in EMT school. So my perspective/experience is utterly useless.
Can a T480 run Mint Cinnamon 21.3, or am I better off using MATE/xfce? It's going to live a pretty easy life. I'll mostly be using it to browse, stream music, do (online) homework, write papers, and put books on my e-reader.
I've had a WD Blue SSD completely die in the past, but that could be coincidental. Then again I now have a WD Black nvme where the SMART error counter trickles upwards, so thanks for reminding me I need to change it xD
I've also had a Kingston SSD fail on writes, and a Samsung SSD where the error counter trickles upwards, so it might just be coincidental. I've also encountered a batch of very expensive Intel SSDs dying early due to a firmware bug, so... TLDR: WD Blue is probably fine :P
Regarding TimeShift, I'm assuming you've specified what it should back up, and where. By default it only backs up system files, basically everything outside your /home folder. And stores it on the root partition. That setup is great for recovering from bad system updates, but useless to protect against drive failure.
Assuming you have specified TimeShift to backup your home folder, to a separate physical drive, then twice per day sounds fine. Daily would probably also be fine. Just ask yourself how catastrophic would it really be to loose 1 day of changes?