Not gonna lie, I don't know what kind of dark magic wefwef pulled through, but it is the first web app I actually find as performant a a native app. It may not be for me (not a big fan of iphone aesthetics), but it is wonderful.
Google nowadays works if you wanna search something from Wikipedia or like the same 20 websites. For anything else, good luck going through all the SEO autogenerated garbage.
Totally agree, it's amazing how many people can be discouraged by a small bump over the road. Kinda like how free mobile games have millions of downloads but games that are like, a dollar, are lucky if hit a thousand (and the gap in quality is astounding most of the time).
I think it's just survivorship bias, kinda like mastodon. The people inclined to come here are probably anti-corporate, and sick of current social media's bullshit.
You pretty much can't go wrong with a Thinkpad, the T series are solid choices and extremely upgradable (T440 and T480 being the most beloved from my perspective).
If you are a vintage dude you may want to take a look at the X series (I've heard good things from the X220).
For a bit more power you may check the X1 Carbon series, these are more modern, but as a consequence they area bit more enshittified, I really like my X1 carbon gen 7 but man, the usb-c charging port and no ethernet kinda suck.
Not a replacement per se, but I am just amazed by how much better some common FOSS apps feel in Linux compared to Windows. Apps like VLC, Calibre, FreeCAD, Libreoffice, hell even Firefox are so much smoother in a UNIX system, almost like THIS is their real home!
People will create the most creative, awesome, fantastic worlds just to stick another love triangle in there smh.