Excellent write-up!

Though, it’s a pity that a great ambassador of OpenBSD has stopped using it.

Initially, I was drawn to KDE Plasma for familiarity. Therefore, when installing Linux for the first time, I chose a distro with KDE Plasma. Which happened to be Fedora Kinoite 35, a very new distro at the time. It was clearly buggy and after fiddling with it for some time, I just had to rebase to Silverblue (and GNOME) for the lack of alternatives.

Thankfully, I actually happened to really like GNOME. This was on a laptop and GNOME’s touchpad gestures just felt very satisfying and intuitive; much better than anything else I had experienced before. Its (intended) workflow also made a lot of sense that way.

GNOME has really grown on me ever since. And while I’ve revisited KDE Plasma to see what I was supposedly missing out on, I simply stuck to GNOME as it felt cleaner and more elegant.

Thanks for the clarification!

I hope you’re not implying that NixOS is the only distro you’re comfortable with. Pretty impressive if you’ve jumped ship directly to NixOS, though.

With all due respect, the biggest takeaway would be that you should never recommend a distro before you’re comfortable with it yourself.

From Star Labs their StarLite tablet looks very attractive. Right now I considering buying a tablet for drawing and a laptop for 3D modeling instead of 2-in-1.

Honestly, this makes a lot of sense. It’s unfortunate that all of your needs aren’t satisfied by a single device. Assuming that the drawing capabilities of the Starlite and Infinityflex are up to par, their hardware specs don’t come even close to Blender’s recommended. So opting for a second device may indeed be necessary.

Whatever you’ll end up picking, I hope you and your wife will be satisfied with the end result 😉!

Consider giving devices offered by NovaCustom a look.

When it comes to Linux-first laptop vendors, it’s definitely my favorite out of the bunch.

On purchasing one of their devices, they offer:

• 3 years of warranty
• 5 years of firmware update support
• 7 years of (guaranteed) spare parts availability

I’m simply unaware of any other (Linux-first) firm that can compete regarding the above.

And I haven’t even mentioned how vast their customization options are, or how well-praised their support is.

I’m actually stunned why it’s not mentioned more often in these conversations.

Btw, I’d actually recommend you to consider the whereabouts of the respective support centers before you buy a device. You never hope to be in that situation, but it makes a real difference when it matters. So, in case you’re unaware, AFAIK:

• NovaCustom; Netherlands. But as long as you’re in EU mainland, it should be good enough.
• Star Labs; UK. EU outside of Great Britain is OK.
• System76; USA.
• Tuxedo; Germany. Again, EU mainland is fine.