I did this. Was a ThinkPad Linuxer for years and now I just use an M1 for sysadmin/programming/web/vids. Quite happy to just use Linux on my servers these days. MacOS does the job nicely on laptop. I suppose it depends on how FOSS you want to be.

Just use a $5 USB-C to 3.5mm DAC?

Demagogarule

Isn’t it quite common to have /boot on an unencrypted partition?

Wow. I’ve been using dd for years and I’d consider myself on the more experienced end of the Linux user base. I’ll use cp from now on. Great link.

How would the update affect stuff like a GoCryptFS volume which I mount and use periodically but not all the time? Would those files be processed much faster than previously?