This is completely untrue in my experience. My X230T has two battlestations: One with an old, square Samsung VGA monitor, and another two hours away with a modern, DisplayPort, high resolution Dell. I regularly hot-swap monitors by unceremoniously pulling it off or slamming it on to either docking station while it's running, and even transform it into tablet mode and flip the internal display output 180° without upsetting the external display.
All of this on Fedora 38 Cinnamon, firmly running X11. No "jank" in sight.
Can you get away with MirrorLink? Truthfully I've never tried it, and I'm pretty sure it's dead if not dying, but it was always going to be my fallback if I found a way to leave Google (or potentially Android entirely).
Especially when they're in one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks with headlights that are right at eye level for anyone in a normal car. Even being followed by a forty year old Mack semi isn't nearly as bad, because they've at least got sealed beam headlights.
I haven't found a way to replicate that, yet. I'd love a start orb hanging off the taskbar in modern Cinnamon or something, but it doesn't seem possible.
+1 for Krita. I've been using Linux since 2015, and to this day haven't completely got my head around GIMP. I know Krita is designed for a different purpose, but it's a lot easier to use for quick touch-ups, which is all I want.
Would you please post a link here if you have made a thread over there? I'd like to follow it.