Sadly more and more modern thinkpads come with soldered RAM, which IMO is a deal breaker. Work gave me an X1 Carbon Gen 13 to use, which was indeed both shockingly fast and lightweight, but had soldered RAM and a mobo failure in the first 3 months, so I kept looking for a personal device.

Ended up with a Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 with a Ryzen 7, SODIMM ram and built like a tank. Also much cheaper than the X1. It's heavy, but I'm also not worried about it getting thrown around in my bag.

Your install was probably fine. But odds are you chose a (somewhat) manual installation and installed Grub (the bootloader) to the wrong device. If you're up for a retry: go the fully-automatic route with the installer. You can try it in a VM first. Just set up VirtualBox on your Windows machine and install Kubuntu to a virtual disk. That way, you can figure out what may have gone wrong. And if shit hits the fan again: you still have a functional operating system, reset the VM and go again.

"i asked chatgpt" microslop is for you

So there's wsl v1 that is a set of bindings yet segregated in some environment but with full access to the outisde scope (that's how sensible it is) --> no kernel here -> partial kernel compatibility. V1 is essentially a microsoft baked msys2 / cygwin

And there's wsl v2 that's a different thing and is essencially a vm --> no std drivers here -> partial driver compatibility. V2 is essentially a microsoft baked virtualbox / vmware

I take the chance to remind every sane person coping with windows to use winget as symptomatic treatment.

It's different, which sometimes translates to harder.
It doesn't work the same as Windows which means that some of your hard earned knowledge of Windows is wasted and some is actually coming back to bite you as you approach a task the wrong way.
I use Fedora 45 KDE as an example of how Linux might have hidden steps that isn't mentioned straight away:

An example of how easy it can seem to setup Fedora 45:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/beginners-guide/install_fedora/

Things that guide conveniently forgets to mention - rpmfusion, ffmpeg and nvidia:
https://rpmfusion.org/EnablingRpmFusionDuringFedoraInstall
https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

Use the Discover store to make it easy to find and install software if you prefer gui over terminals:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/kde/appinstallation/

To ensure that an app installation works well in Linux you should always try to use the official repositories, flatpaks, docker or appimages.
Downloading an installation file (.deb/.rpm) from the developers github is not the normal way to install software, when you use a repository (or alternate methods like flatpaks, docker and appimages) you save yourself a lot of headaches when it comes to updating your software and lowers the risk of "dependency hell" where different software want different versions of the same libraries.

To get Multimedia and Nvidia gpus to work properly you want to use rpmfusion to install the drivers.
Never install the drivers directly from Nvidia, it will only come back to haunt you with weird errors, bugs and problems and is a common trap for former Windows users.

The guides aren't difficult, but the main guide forgets to mention the extra steps needed that most users want to do.

You have a reply saying that a heatsink won’t fix the problem. That person is deadass wrong.

I'm assuming you mean me. I suggest you read what I wrote again before you apply your "years of experience" because your terrible advice will leave OP with a dead PC in a couple years at best. I'm not saying an nvme heatsink won't reduce the ssd's temps. I'm saying you're setting a heatgun at 100C, aiming it at the nvme and now attempting to fix the "heat issue" with a heatsink. The nvme temps are the tree in the forest and OP is better off addressing the core problem, airflow, which will both reduce nvme temps and prolong the life of the entire pc.

The problem is that the ssd gets hot when it does stuff. A passive heatsink provides more thermal mass and more surface area with a greater capacity to transfer its heat into the air. That will, 100% improve things.

Wrong. The SSD also gets hot when the rest of the PC "does stuff", including the cpu and/or gpu which are often the leading contributers to internal temps. More thermal mass and surface area will mean little if the ambient temps are high. You have all these case manufacturers making high end cases with 8+ fan mounts for a reason - because of how important moving hot air away from the hardware components is. Your solution will absolutely not improve things a 100%.

I am speaking from years of experience when I say the following: a half inch nut from the hardware store superglued to the package

Please don't do this OP. Superglue typically bonds two materials via chemical reaction and will damage your hardware, removal will also be a nightmare depending on the glue. I'm assuming OP wanted to say thermal adhesive but superglue sounds more "hack-ey" when trying to impress a novice I guess.

Yeah, although just trying the installation another time might be easier than debugging this problem...

That’s not usually what happens

But the front fell off!

Linux is a spectrum, from super hard to very easy. Sounds like you hit a not-easy one.

If you want an easy time, stick with the major distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc), and avoid any complex setups. Use that for a while to get familiarity, and then build up from there.

Proton apology lol. Too little, too late.

Must be as easy as windows, but in windows the easy way to fix a big problem is install again, un linux you can reinstall or... Fix with commands. Probably in your case you need to write commands because something go wrong with the installation, maybe you did something wrong, or maybe Ubuntu read something in a bad way and make a mistake installing Ubuntu. Is impossible to know if you don't share the exact error message.

My choice is any gen T14 as long as it's Ryzen graphics (for hassle-free Linux drivers), refurbished.

That’s not usually what happens, you should get an installer that’s a gui, and it should give you a gui, something went wrong with your installation.

Without more details I can’t say what happened for sure though

Depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Installing a Linux distribution and using it for everyday tasks (including full-disk-encryption) should be fairly easy. It's basically just pressing "Continue" a bunch of times for me. And after a while I get a desktop with a browser, an email client etc and I'm set.

If you want advice: Maybe go for one of the more popular distribuitions as of today. (K)Ubuntu is okay-ish but I don't think it's all that great. Or maybe ask someone to help you find the issue. Computers are known to be fairly complicated in general and there's always some annoying issues.

Calling a robot names is racism?

Lol. Lmao even.

Best resource when I was researching. Should help you too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad

TUXEDO OS is tuned for and has preinstalled tools that work with TUXEDO's computers and laptops.

You'll never get good balance with that case as you've explained yourself.

If you can, remove the lid and run like that, or I'd be cutting big holes in it until it's just a chassis. If you have cats/kids and need it protecting, maybe put it in a normal PC case. I've run a lot of machines naked and they breathe a lot better.

The T480 is only 8 years old

Yeah, having it based on testing is a poor choice.

I usually just go to one of the local laptop refurbishing shops and have a look at what's in stock: https://www.afbshop.de/gebrauchte-notebooks/lenovo-thinkpads/

Last time I went to buy a new Thinkpad, I came home with a Dell 7390 😂 Mine does have a touchscreen, but I guess that'd be the main factor limiting your selection here.

i had a similar device. i drilled a hole right into it and put a tiny fan on it

This comment would make sense if it was in reference to anything resembling a human. It's dehumanizing language for something that people claim exhibits creativity and makes art. Fuck clankers. They're not people. Literally. Data centers are cooking the planet and you're mincing words about how we refer to what will eventually kill us. It's not racism. AI isn't people and LLMs aren't a race. Go all the way away with this.