Well, I’d start by saying that linux has a superior story here vs batch files.

The most direct equivalent is bash/shell scripts. However, they are far more capable. Better conditional statements, loops, variables, text manipulation. It’s always shocking to me how limited batch files are when I’ve had to deal with them. Bash/shell are more equivalent to powershell if you are familiar with that.

But if you want something nicer/more powerful, then nearly every linux distro at this point ships with python. That’s what I’d probably use if I needed more than 100 lines of code. As a bonus you can also install python on windows/mac and keep using those scripts.

If I wanted to install something additionally though, then I do really like the asthetics of ruby. But it’s by no means as popular.

Perl is the old guard here and it does generally exist on all linux systems. However, I think python is superior in basically every way.

The process of installing gentoo and arch is nearly identical. Really the main difference between the two is that arch (usually) offers binaries to install while gentoo prefers that you compile things (though it does actually allow you to use binaries as well).

I suppose my very basic knowledge of terminal isn’t enough to install Gentoo, even with the handbook.

Nope. The gentoo handbook is VERY good. Don’t skip parts on it and you can install a gentoo. You really don’t need very advanced terminal skills to get gentoo up and running. So long as you understand basics like cd/nano/ls/cat then you can pretty easily do the entire handbook.

One thing to realize is that you can always go backwards and fix things if you make a mistake. Nothing is permanent. If you get into a “why isn’t this working” state, just go back and see if you’ve skipped something.

I wasn’t fully aware of NVK and where it’s at. It’s actually pretty exciting. I wouldn’t mind dropping my current nvidia binary blob for fully open source drivers.

Not as bad as you might think. The nouveau drivers have come a long way for maxwell. You should give it a shot if you haven’t. But, unfortunately, if you are using anything new then nouveau sucks. It’s a fun game where you get to wait until nvidia no longer wants to support your GPU and hope by that point that nouveau has progressed far enough that you won’t be looking at noman’s land.

Graphics drivers are what matters. Your orange pi uses a mali GPU which is well supported by Linux (thanks ARM).

nVidia is just barely at the point where their most recent gpu drivers aren’t terrible under Wayland. It’s taken a while to get there.

GPUs with good open source drivers will fare fine.