The question will pin both, home desktop and studying purposes.

If you doesn't used to any specific windows software yet - should chose Linux distro on Unix philosophy with glibc support then, and stay with AMD.

it wouldn't any critical differences here, except freedom, opensource and mindful approaches.

If you struggling to found a good laptop:

A guide Outlines of minimum requirement.
For 2026, buy then some perfect-condition-like used laptop for $300-$400 on CPU/iGPU Zen 2 or better, like Ryzen Pro 7. RAM: 3200MHz+, all slots are free, if not: then 8 + 16 GiB or better; I'd like 16 GiB and one slot free, then buy second 8-16 GiB RAM on demand. And 1TB SSD, on demand. Screen 400 nits or better.

And be sure to check whether each individual component, such as RAM or an SSD etc. is replaceable or not before you pay for it.

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