It is 10 yes. I glossed over a few steps as 'updated and restarted' - I actually spent an entire day trying to enable secure boot and (as required in order to) upgrade to 11 and then recovering from fearing I'd bricked it. (GPU doesn't support it, I now think (beforehand had no idea that even might be an issue). Motherboard then wouldn't revert to integrated graphics even with the card removed.)

I really can't fathom how any technically-minded professional gets anything done with Windows - nevermind SEs - it just feels constantly in the way. And I'm not a die-hard Linux (nor Apple) fanatic, I grew up with Windows, it got me into 'computers'. It just seems like an uncontrollable (as in literally, operator not in control) mess compared even to macOS to me now.

(I also really wanted to like it coming back to it - I thought with WSL surely that was going to take the Unixy strength of macOS and far supersede it as a when-I-can't-use-Linux device. But so far, egh, nevermind that I think the hardware's great, I think I'd pay the Apple tax just for the OS.)

Maybe I'll try again to upgrade if the integrated graphics support it.