catboat

Here is a list of some songs that give me similar feelings that Portishead does. They are not exactly like Portishead, but IMHO definitely worth a try.

Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy, Massive Attack - Teardrop, Röyksopp & Alison Goldfrapp - Impossible, Röyksopp - Vision One, Saint Saviour - This Ain’t No Hymn

Massive Attack is closer to Portishead, but they don’t have female vocals on all of their songs. Röyksopp goes to a bit different direction but they have many songs with different female vocalists that might be something you like.

2NA, CORAL 2NA!

I also recommend Linux Mint. It’s been hands down the best experience of all the Linux distros I’ve tried.

The installation is done with a USB stick. In short, you download the Linux iso image and create a bootable USB stick with a software. In Windows I have always used Rufus for that.

The Linux installer gives you a choise to wipe everything and install Linux. Installing Mint has always been very straight forward.

I can’t comment on hardware since I’ve only used Linux on +5 year old laptops. They seem to work fine.

There most likely will be many new things that can feel confusing in the beginning, but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. There also are tons of good tutorials of everything.

Best of luck to your Linux project!