I’d love to read your explanation for each distro’s ranking.

As someone else has pointed out, it really depends on your use case. Although I personally keep my drives (SSD & HDD) in a redundant RAID configuration as my data is largely mission-critical.

Due to the relatively small size and overall complexity/tolerances required for the object, I wonder how it would have turned out if done on an SLA printer.

I just spent way too long playing that… lol, thanks!

You could do your programming theoretically on any laptop, although I’d say faster the better/easier it’ll be for you in the long run. In regard to your comment on upgradability I’d recommend taking a look at a Framework laptop where their whole goal is repairability which comes with the added benefit of being upgradable.