I'm referring to semi-modern laptops you're most likely to get out of some corporation's dump of obsolete tech, but that's still usable - let's say T480 and onward. you can retrofit those with tons of RAM, cheap storage, they have capable quad-cores, etc. you can get something like a T14 Ryzen 6-core with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD in the $200 region, if you do everything yourself.
everything before that is proper old tech, with predominantly anemic dual-cores (the ones you mention have single-channel RAM) and as such are a fun tinkering project, similar to the cyber deck projects - costs a lot of money, doesn't do much. on the other side of that fence are power-hungry haswells and friends that can't be wrangled into single-digit Watt/Hour territory however hard you tried.
so if you get one of those for free, or close to it, and you have parts laying around, by all means - this is as close you can get to the bespoke PC build in the laptop world. but ixnay on bying a decade old laptop for work and/or education.
first off, "lenovo" is not the thing to get, it's just a subset of those - thinkpads. and even then, not all of those - just the T and P series. those are the "pro" lines, durable, dependable, expandable, serviceable, and widely used. so when corporations swap out their fleet for new models, they flood the market and hence can be had for cheap. multiple generations of the same model are cross-generation compatible, so they share the same peripherals, like docks, have interchangeable parts, like keyboards, displays, etc.
don't get used ideapads, thinkbooks, thinkpad E/L series, etc. those are either consumer-class models, have substandard features, are incompatible with each other, etc. don't get the yogas and S-suffix models, as you'll have a removed time servicing and/or upgrading those.
the whole point of getting something used, i.e. something that was touched and rubbed and spat all over, is if it's a) in good enough shape and b) you get it for cheap. you took care of of item A when going for thinkpad T-series and you're compromising on item B if you're going through an intermediary.
them dudes you mention are skinning you alive - 500 EUR for a T14 G1 is insane, it should be less than half of that. I also like how they're including none of the tech specs which just ups the ick factor.
thanks. looks easy enough to implement on other distros. this was my primary issue on why I wouldn't use it, it just seemed bonkers to me to have the game I'm playing on my other device simultaneously being blasted on the main monitor.
the only thing missing would be runtime on/off/reconfigure, as I abhor rebooting.
a distribution is just an assortment of packages, it's the same linux + driver underneath. nvidia on linux is a headache. are there people who made it work? sure. is that a worthwhile waste of your time? it is not.
get hardware that's linux supported and you'll have plenty of challenges during the transition, you don't need the additional "self destruction in..." countdown timer booming from the speakers.
if you still wanna have at it, pop_os (however it's spelt), bazzite and nobara are some od the distros that have dedicated nvidia install images and are thusly more likely to work OOB and work better afterwards.
if you trust mozilla, firefox sync handles most of that - bookmarks, history, passwords, extensions and some of their settings, etc; cookies and localstorage aren't copied over, for e.g. logged-in sites and such.
do you have a ballpark figure of potential savings in $/€ per annum? and for what hardware? I remember calculating something similar and I don't think I broke $20 in total, so promptly forgot about it.
tried 'em all and they all suck. it's possible there are options that work for monolingual people, but for simultaneously using 3-4 languages without annoying switching back and forth, there is no alternative.
since android 15 you can disable network access to any app and that's how I run gboard, the only google app I have on my mobile devices.
I ran something similar a while ago; it automated the steps you're describing so it downloaded every new video from the channels I'm subscribed to along with metadata. I gave that up as it's hella inefficient. what I have now is just a media sink by way of macast and I can send videos for playback to my media PC. so if you don't need those videos for archiving purposes, try it out.
don't go with server variants of the OS. they are intended for boxes that work without display and keyboard, which you have. instead, install any normal distro you're familiar with. it's infinitely easier to fix something with the full GUI at your disposal.
this is just your first install, you will iterate, and through that process you'll get better and leaner, in terms of underlying OS. think of it as training wheels on a bike, you'll pull them off eventually.
wired connection only, leave wireless turned off, and assign it a static IP address.
don't do containerS, do one container first. figure out where you're gonna store the compose files, where it will store data, how you will back that data up, etc. then add another. does it fit into your setup? do you need to modify something? rinse. repeat.
casaOS, aside from it's murky background (some chinese startup or sumsuch, forgot?) doesn't provide that path forward nor allows you to learn something, too much hand holding.
that's the part that's bothering you? not evil corp doing evil things in the charge of its evil overlord?