Which version of Steam did you install? I think that’s a quirky one where the Flatpak version works better in some cases, but check out the native if you’re already running the Flatpak version (there are pros and cons to each).

9070 XT is new enough that driver issues aren’t surprising. Periodically check in for updates drivers, more than you would usually.

I recently played through Cyberpunk without any compatibility layers and it worked flawlessly, and I’ve played Hitman:WoA (I know a different game/version, but closest I had) using only the Proton compatibility. (It runs native, but has some menu issues.)

I bring these up because I was running into similar issues as yours at first when I switched to Linux, and it was all caused by the Steam version I had installed. I switched that, and everything else fell into place.

Best of luck!

In addition to this, non-competative online games generally are safer. Look into the individual games you’re interested in, but something like WoW or FFXIV should still work fine, Last Epoch or PoE2 work.

Stuff like Lethal Company (Platinum) or Rust (Bronze) are more case by case, depending on the anticheat they use, and even then it’s often a matter of whether the developers include support or not.

Space Marine 2 uses an anticheat, but they have support enabled for Linux (though they removed it in one of the patches, before reimplementing it).

(Also a slight pet peeve to OP, it’s “right off the bat”)

It doesn’t surprise me for college level students to not know it, but for college students in a math heavy field to not know it. Both in terms of how do they pass an entrance exam for that program, as well as how does someone that is bad in a subject decide that is the career they want?

It isn’t the “quality” of the piece that makes it more valuable, but the intrinsic quality of being the original. An exact, molecularly identical copy might make that messy, in that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them, but the true original is still the one with the value.

I was prepared for it to be lib arts or humanities, not engineering

No job is safe from AI or robotic automation. They might not be able to do it well, but that won’t stop greedy and/or cheap businesses from trying.

Something rubs the the wrong way about how the teacher presented that problem. Was the lesson supposed to be “don’t believe anything unless you can verify it yourself”? In his example, he was the unreliable source. I’m assuming he was infering the paper can also be an unreliable source? I’m hoping he went into the importance of checking multiple, credible sources to get a larger picture, rather than just leaving it at “you always might be lied to”. A blanket “don’t trust so-called authorities for facts” is how we end up with people questioning vaccines and flat earthers turning from satire to something troubling.