Yeah, PPAs usually complicate things. IIRC the advice is disabling them before upgrading major versions, but this can be a pain if you use many repositories simultaneously

I count myself as one of the lucky ones that isn’t forced to use Windows by the company I work for. We even have our internal (ubuntu-based) distro, and despite being passable proficient with Linux, I can count on having support if I ever need it.

That’s all fine and dandy but at work I am forced to use Windows, Office, Teams, and all that.

Yeah, me too. But all of those (except Windows of course) can be used on the browser

I always broke it before long, but that is the Ubuntu curse

There is a Mint based on pure Debian if you think the Ubuntu-based one is “too fragile” as you put it. You actually made me curious in how you keep breaking Mint, I’ve been using it for several years, incrementally upgrading it since 2021 with little to no breakage at all.

I don’t know, but if any exists you might as well find it in phoronix itself

Phoronix did some benchmarks contrasting stock amd64 vs. amd64v3. Not really impressive right now, but who knows if things will improve later on