Another reason to use Logitech mice: ease of repair. Apart from skates covering the screws on the underside, Logitech does not use glue to keep it’s mice together. And due to their popularity, replacement parts (including the battery btw) are widely available even for older models.

It was a “Game Disc” and a “Video Disc”. You could choose to copy the Videos during install or you would have to physically swap discs when you got to a rendered cutscene (which was only between acts, but still).

Matlab exists for Linux and is the same as on Windows. LibreOffice is a fully functioning office suit for Linux.

I can’t speak to SOLIDWORKS, their website only lists a windows version. There is however some community work being done here https://github.com/cryinkfly/SOLIDWORKS-for-Linux And it looks like they have it running.

Given that Fedora and Ubuntu are listed on that github, you should probably start with either one of those.

For a complete beginner I’d recommend Ubuntu, since it’s a solid distro with huge wealth on online support available.