I knew I shouldn't have put my pitchfork and torch away so quickly. Friggin' Google. As much as I love playing with maps, Google can take a long walk off a short pier - I'm not desperate enough for their "product" to mess around with WINE.
It says "Mac and PC" (not "Windows PC") - we've been complaining for years that "PC" doesn't mean "Windows PC", looks like Google for once got the message.
When you click through you do get a "GoogleEarthLinux.bin", or at least, I did. (downloaded on x86_64/Arch Linux/Firefox)
I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know yet if it actually WORKS (unlike the previous version of "regular" Google Earth for me) but it looks like they are handing out Linux versions.
Thanks to the availability of Heimdall, you hypothetically have the ability to unlock and reflash any of the Samsung Galaxy devices (I've only tried on my ancient "Mesmerize" [a variant of the original Galaxy S] and my S4, but both worked fine).
I don't really feel confident that any of the manufacturers are going to bother keeping up with updating older devices, so the first thing I've been looking for since the harsh lesson I was taught by Motorola with my "CLIQ" [ironically still a useful device, having gained support from CyanogenMod back in Gingerbread] is the likelihood that I'll be able to update the device myself with a 3rd-party build.
Granted, that's not for everybody, but it's not as difficult as one might think.
I recently completely reset/reformatted my 2012 Nexus 7 and put CyanogenMod's CM12 ("Lollipop") nightly on it. I intentionally did NOT install the "gapps" (Google apps) add-on.
So far, my own 2012 Nexus 7 has been working great, better even than it was with CM11 ("Key Lime Pie"/Android 4.4.4) with all the Google bloat.
Google has been shoving more and more of the "Android" experience into their apps instead of the OS. The not only are the "apps" and "services" getting more digitally obese, but there seem to be more and more of them every release, just loading up and clogging up ram and occasionally "updating" themselves online doing who-knows-what.
I feel like I saw similar (though less obvious) improvements in performance with previous now-"obsolete" devices that I've similarly purged and custom-ROMmed without the Google Search/Play/Music/Plus/News-And-Weather/Mail/Now/etc.
You're kind of stuck with it if you're dependent on apps that are only available from the Google Play store, but I'm finding I can get everything I need from f-droid instead, or through the web browser, at least so far (and for my own needs).
Anyway, point is, so far it doesn't seem to me like it's really "Lollipop" that the 2012 N7 has a problem with...
I do have the development branch of kdeconnect installed, which I THINK is the kf5 port - it seems to work fine.
They've split the core system and applications development, so I assume that as KF5-native apps are released, they'll just replace the kf4 versions. I'm assuming most distributions will consider them "testing" or "unstable" versions for a while so you'd have to explicitly ask for them (for the first few versions) instead of having them just pop up without warning.
With the core libraries that they depend on in apparently pretty solid shape as of KF5.6 in my experience, I suspect the kf5-native applications will stabilize pretty quickly once they come out.
KDE4's apps still work under it, too. I'm using it fine, though I'm missing the "IM Presence" widget for kde-telepathy.
I actually haven't been seeing crashes or other serious problems so far since about the last couple of releeases (KF5.4), just missing "KF5-native" features from KDE4.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.