my /boot is showing only 11% available of 250 mb. how do i increase that? can i? do i want to?

keep in mind i'm an intel troop and am truly learning a new OS. will the fact that the /boot directory is almost full impact performance?

Probably of no concern - it isn't used in day-to-day running. But it might cause a software update to fail.
Maybe.

You need to learn to include relevant info so we can answer you. Post the output of these for a start so we can get an idea of what you have available to expand into.That second one will ask for your password.

You could remove some kernel packages you aren't using. To find the current kernel version:Then, depending on your distro, use the package management tool to uninstall the other kernels.

As stated kernel updates will fail. Although increasing the partition size will help in the short term it will still be a problem since old kernels are never removed.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RemoveOldKernels

My "usual sequence of update commands" always does an auto-remove of old packages, including old kernels. But, always do this sort of thing using the package-management system. The package-manager expects to know what is and isn't on your system, and it will complain (loudly) if something that it expects to remove isn't there. It will also "do all the right 'other' things," like rebuilding the GRUB configuration files and maintaining kernel-module repositories.

/boot only really needs to contain the current kernel and one previous one. And, nearly all the time, the previous one is never used (again). However, the automatic-removal process should take care of this sort of thing for you, "automagically." Which is what you want.

This far along just reinstall with no boot partition /home maybe:(‽:) https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...weekly-builds/ backups, also, maybe?