haha no, but that's the stereotype. A lot more Linux users use a terminal than Windows users use the DOS prompt, but that's because they are more tech savvy in general. You can completely avoid it though. Sure. First check if your hard drive has ATA Secure Erase, because hardware based erasure is the most secure. From reading your description of the laptop, it probably doesn't. In that case, burn DBAN to a CD and use that to overwrite it. The default settings (2 random writes + 1 zero write) are fine. So you want to put the Tails image on the hard drive? I'm not sure how you would do that. If you remove the hard drive, shouldn't the BIOS check for other bootable media and use whatever is available, even if doesn't let you change the default boot order in the case of multiple bootable devices? That might be an easier solution.