It's not as easy as you make it sound, unfortunately. Sure, the hardware is capable, but the usage patterns are so new that UX expectations will be all over the place.

On the one hand, I'd want a full desktop experience (Vanilla Debian with Gnome, preferably) when docked... on the other hand, I'd want full continuity and access to the apps I just had open in phone mode, in addition to full desktop versions of those apps when applicable. The browser is one case where the degree of integration will likely be tricky, if only because every user has a different expectation.

Alternatively I guess I could live with what amounts to a full VM container for the desktop side, fully decoupled from the phone side, but I highly doubt the general user base would go for that.

The current build of Android 16 on my Pixel 8 Pro has a desktop mode with windowing support, but it's very much just Android apps in a clunky basic window manager - Firefox is basically unusable (zoom settings, mobile sites by default etc.). It does work well as an RDP client at least, which is what I've been using it for.

>It won't take long, but really ...is anyone really that desperate to use Windows ?

I'm kinda desperate to keep my 85 year old father on Windows 10 rather than moving him over to Windows 11 or Linux.

I've already set up a new laptop with Debian Trixie for him that looks 99% like his Windows 10 setup, and I'll bring that to him later this year when I next visit, but I see about a 50% chance that he won't like it or feel overwhelmed by the remaining differences and will want to go back to Windows 10. And I expect Windows 11 would be even worse in terms of UI changes etc.

Why buy an X1C then? If you want ports, buy a P16 and be done with it. Don't buy the device where one of the main feature is thinness (which comes with an inherent lack of ports) and then complain about the lack of ports... and it's not like there aren't other compromises between those two extremes.

If you need to plug that many peripherals into your laptop, you purchased the wrong laptop. I get wanting a full sized keyboard and mouse at your desk, but that issue has long been solved with docking stations.

I would not purchase a laptop I'm not comfortable typing/mousing on, especially away from my desk...

There are a bunch of different models unfortunately. Some are crap for certain purposes - if your work issued you a workstation when you'd rather have a thin'n'light, or they gave you one of the cheapo models (which unfortunately do also exist - another thing that Apple does better), then you either got one of the crap ones or something that doesn't suit your preferences. Heavy, SLOW and loud points to cheapo rather than workstation...

That said, if you want a decent keyboard layout, there's no real alternative to a T/X/P series these days - proper arrow keys with PgDnPgUp, physical home/end keys, a right-ctrl key... The newer models have standard Fn placement btw.

It's hilarious how bad the actual products are for the amount of money they're spending on "talent".

But these problems generally aren't solved just "on the ground" - you need a chain of solid people all the way from the person implementing the change/feature/fix up to the person making the decisoin to implement, including all the support personnel. Dev/Eng., PMs, testers, dept. head, etc. - everyone involved needs to be competent and at least somewhat see the big picutre - that's when we get a cohesive end product that works well.

>You seem to have made my point for me. In response to saying older Linux is overly complex, I was pointed to Nano. When I performed a search for basic Nano use, the first results launched immediately into various options like what I cited. At no point did either source mention a distinction between terminal based applications and GUI based ones in the context of Linux.

YOU are the one who brought up setting a default text editor in Windows using the GUI context menu after bringing up setting nano as a default text editor. YOU'RE THE ONE who conflated GUI and terminal applications in a completely nonsensical way.

I'm starting to feel like you're being obtuse on purpose in order to get a rise out of people. Your excuse of distinguishing between "modern noob distros" and older distros makes no sense in this context - none of the older distros required you to assign a default text editor using SystemD services either.

You've obviously used Linux for a long time and are aware that none of what you've posted is relevant to someone who wants to use Linux as a productive tool for work or play. Your active effort to throw in irrelevant jargon, GPT gibberish and generally nonsensical approaches to long-solved problems tells me that you're not interested in a fact based discussion.

I'm out, have fun with whatever you're trying to do here. :)

>I asked ChatGPT to generate a set of satirical commands that poke fun at how basic tasks that can be complex on Linux. So it wasn't a hallucination, it was intended as satire.

Satire only hits the spot when it's somewhat based in reality.

I think the problem is that your lack of experience with Linux is preventing you from recognizing what's funny and what's just incorrect...

>Below are the commands to set Nano as the default editor from geeksforgeeks, and they're real. In Windows this can be accomplished by right clicking a text file, selecting properties, and pushing the "change default program" button.

Here again... why would you set a TERMINAL text editor like Nano to be your default GUI based text editor? Your lack of understanding is what's holding you back. A terminal text editor is invoked with a TERMINAL command directly. There are no defaults to set.

Setting a default text GUI text editor on most LInux distributions works just like it has on WIndows for the last 20 years - right click on the file and click "Open with...". Then select the program you want and check the "Open with this application by default" button.

Let's go with the usual car analogy: You're going on about the horrors of availability of charging stations and range anxiety, but we're not even talking about electric cars. Hell, we're talking about a shopping cart.

Linux battery life is only good if you pick the right hardware. Intel devices with iGPU are pretty close, as are SOME AMD devices as long as you stay away from video (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/10223).

In practice, though, if you don't cherry-pick your hardware for Linux power consumption, that MacBook willl run far longer on a charge. I'm currently stitting in front of a P14s with the 500 nit 4k touchscreen and an AMD 6850U - at full brightness it idles at about 10W, which means it'll give me about 4-5h of battery life if I'm browsing mostly static websites. The Intel based devices in my stable with low-power FullHD(+) screens idle at ~5W on max brightness (albeit 300 and 400 nits respectively) and provide easily double the battery life. Indoors with lower brightness I've often hit 15 hours with my X390 before needing some sleep...

> The following is a fairly accurate set of commands required to create a simple text document in an older Linux system, which may or may not have been written by AI

Not only was it written by AI, it's obviously also a hallucination. Why the F would you run a text editor as a SystemD (also a very recent addition to Linux, btw.) service? A simple terminal text editor (e.g. nano going back to Debian Potato, and ed and vi or variants thereof before it) has been included with mainstream distributions such as Debian for a VERY long time.

The syntax is also prettty simple, e.g.: nano textFileName.txt

Your entire post is complete bull.

Even currently available smartphones have a tap to pay range of multiple centimeters. Stop buying thre cheapest crappiest phones available and you'll be fine. I would prefer to be able to limit the range to "full contact" or have an "initiate payment" button.

>Neither of them understand what they've given up (probably even a little bit) for the captive portals they've inured themselves to.

They aren't giving anything up - if they had actual computers they'd be on Windows 11 by now, which is becoming (or has become) the next captive portal.

While I don't 100% agree with "open Office suites work just fine" because LibreOffice (the one I use privately and for side gigs) has a bunch of issues, I would like to volunteer that MS365 currently has MORE issues. Excel especially, when combined with online editing, is a huge fiasco when you start creating larger spreadsheets with lots of filtering. Even on a brand new laptop you get the dreaded "14 cores... xx%" status bar notification for minutes on end when activating a filter rule. Loading the same spreadsheets online often results in a "We ran into an error - please open in desktop version of Excel" popup.

And since it's Microsoft, that ties nicely into OneDrive freezing Explorer for 10 seconds at a time every time you move or rename a file in one of your shared folders...

Closing the work laptop and opening something that runs Debian is a huge relief these days.

I think your Thinkpad is broken. My house is littered with the things and none of them charge off only a single port unless defective.

Notable exceptions are P and X1E series devices, but those don't charge off USB-C at all up until the latest X1E gen.

What crappy laptops are we talking about here? I've seen this on tablets and phones but never a laptop. Even my crappy Dell work laptop does just fine on a USB-C docking station.