Turns out the reply in my thread telling me the best way to combat not caring about Linux is to care about Linux was absolutely correct.
I picked up a laptop, installed Linux Mint Cinnamon, and I’m already obsessed. I haven’t had this much fun with a PC in a long time and it’s just a cheapo Dell Inspiron 3520.
Maybe pick up a microcontroller and write a driver for so a device can connect with it? I had great fun writing an Hitachi LCD driver for the Arduino. You can get an arduino for like 5 bucks on aliexpress or you buy an even cheaper MC and play around with that.