Your views on distros follows mine. Fedora is my day to day and debian is my server os of choice.

I too started with slackware but I never mastered it. I moved back and forth between windows and Linux eventually settling into debian. I tried different distros and just never loved them. After a while of using Debian I tried redhat. I liked the ecosystem and have been on it for years. I still use Debian for servers without a wm.

Just a quick question have you verified they are supported on the support matrix? I know various hardware on the surface-linix kernel has varying degrees of success.

Another issue others are not addressing is the memory limitations of 32bit software. I am facing it now with a large database that is stuck in a 32 bit world. You may have issues finding 32 bit builds of software as well.

The surface pro 5 is the most supported surface. I have been using it for a few years and it is pretty awesome. Pair it with a brydge keyboard and you have a hell of a laptop. I understand though brydge discontinued their surface keyboard

Another vote for navidrome. I tried substreamer on android ibdid not like the search. I use symfonium easy interface let’s me randomize in many ways.

On a side question anybody have suggestions for automatically creating genre based m3u files? I would like to setup “radio” like stations but adding my music to a playlist.