I use FastMail as well. I actually went from FastMail to Proton, and then back to FastMail.

I configure a lot of my home networking equipment and servers to send me emails for things like installing software updates, reboots, and any possible security issues. I couldn’t make that work with Proton not supporting any standard mail protocols (I know about Bridge, but it requires a GUI, and I didn’t want to use a third party program).

I used to have a Shield. I donated it to GoodWill when Nvidia updated their UI to start showing ads on the Home Screen. I switched to Apple TV and not only does it not force me to watch ads, it’s actually just been a better overall. I haven’t had a single issue streaming anything from Plex to my Apple TV, where sometimes the Shield would struggle with high fidelity audio tracks.

I’ve been really enjoying Cockpit as well.

From what I recall the completely fair scheduler (CFS) used by default on most Linux systems has a lower average latency than the RT kernel. The RT kernel just gives you more consistency, hence the CFS having lower latency “on average”

So honestly for opening Firefox it’ll probably depends more on your SSD data rate, but in theory it’ll open faster on a “regular” distribution most of the time.

Real time is good for things like audio processing where having better guarantees that a process will get its share of the CPU is a benefit.

Hey man, I don’t want to discourage you, but this is one of those things where if you have to ask how to do something you’re probably not experienced enough to do it. That being said, as a learning opportunity even if you don’t make it far you’ll still learn a lot about how GPUs work.

I’d start by looking at any existing drivers you can find and see if you can document or find documentation for the commands fed to the GPU. From there you can look at the Mesa project for examples of converting Vulkan to instructions for specific processors and see if you can get it to all fit together for your project.

For newer APIs the kernels documentation is good:

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

As for getting help, the #kernelnewbies channel on the OFTC IRC network is a good place to ask questions.

Have fun learning!

I’ve done some kernel development. I’d suggest using a modern system. Most of the basic stuff in the book is still accurate and there’s great documentation available to help find newer APIs. The kernel is always refactoring so learning to find newer info is part of the skills you’ll need to develop anyway.