So the Linux lappy’s screen started flickering without reason and then conked out. Rebooting next day gave me 5 minutes of graphics before the darkness descended. It seems time-related, an instant reboot just gives blackness after the initial boot screen.
This sucks for the following reasons: this was my Linux laptop, and it had the best keyboard of the 2 I’m using. So my productivity will go down.
On the other hand this is a second-hand machine that’s basically non-essential to my life, and I managed to rescue the important files from it via FireWire. I’ll see if I can’t deliver another laptop from Windowsness or convert the current one to Ubuntu instead.