A surface tablet can be booted with Linux.

However I really don’t think a laptop is a bad decision. I myself run a 14" Lenovo ThinkPad: https://amzn.eu/d/09sY8lt1

It’s honestly small and I use it as a “on call” machine when I leave the house. Thing is light so I barely notice it in my bag

I was hoping this would do something cool. All this seems to do is clear the cache directory on a cron. Android already has tools for you to do this.

I recall in Futurama this didn’t end well

So as your on separate drives, you shouldn’t see issues with MS nuking the boot partition.

IF you are installing both from Scratch. Install Windows first. The reason for this is Windows will see the Boot partition on the 2nd disk for Linux and go “mine now”. If you already have windows running (sounds like you do) then you are all set to just install Linux on the 2nd drive.

In the BIOS, Linux is the boot drive as Grub will see Windows and you can select the Distro to boot each time. I don’t trust the windows selector

I also dual boot on the main PC so my wife can do her own thing. I’ve never had any issues with the installations on seperate disks, so you are doing the best possible setup here for this

I like the clean slate. Nothing better than starting the day, booting up and getting a fresh desktop to get on with stuff. Not slugging around sessions or open programs

I just shutdown when I’m done with work. My PC is only ever on if I’m using it. This feels like a waste of energy.