Seconding LMDE, been on it for a year on my study laptop. Literally never ever had a problem so far, and being an “out of box” distro there’s minimal work needed to daily drive.

Working at a computer shop, Lenovo ThinkPads are usually pretty fine, but the main fault we’ve seen with them is lack or completely missing thermal compound. On one occasion I saw my colleague’s machine not post, and IIRC we had to reset the CMOS to get it back up.

God the school’s response is so sleazy and unapologetic