My top pick for a Linux laptop would be the Dell XPS 13 9310. It's old I guess, from 2020. But the build quality and Linux support is excellent. You could get a used one from eBay for around 400USD.
Alternatively, maybe you could look for a used Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I've purchased several of those in the past and have had really good experiences with them. The hardware is great and the software support is excellent.
I would avoid Framework. I actually just switched back to the Dell XPS 13 9310 after a year of using the Framework. Linux support on the Framework is just not as good as some other laptops. The biggest con of Framework is the HiDPI display. You will never get the display to look good. You'll have to do a ton of tweaking and debugging—and you'll still have some apps that are blurry or have weirdly sized icons or text. See: https://lemmy.today/post/22761155/13770242
I walk through my day and most people’s demeanor hasn’t changed in the slightest
I'm unhappy and angry at the situation. But, am I supposed to mope around all day or have depressing conversations with everyone I meet? Should I start fighting every Trump supporter in my small town?
I've been using Vim for over 10 years. The first few years I used it badly. Later I took time to really learn it. Now I can use it fairly decently, but I still learn new things every now and then.
It feels like a really good investment. It's been around forever, it's gonna be around forever, it's installed on almost all computers, and you're going to be forced to use it at some point or another.
I really enjoy being able to go to any computer and starting up a familiar editor, without installing or configuring stuff. I also use a very vanilla Vim. If a coworker's laptop or some server has a different Vim config than mine, I can usually do vim -u NONE to get back to a familiar place.
Because ... well ... wait, not a bad idea. Although, this would get rid of comments. Which in my case, I didn't have too many, so I could have manually added them back.
if I choose to store them online/cloud encrypted / (edit: encrypt first then upload it) ... there’s always the potential for a very near future breaches or compromises
Does this matter? Say you upload your encrypted photo backup to Mega Upload (or whatever) and some unauthorized person gets a copy of your encrypted data. So? It's encrypted? They can't read or see the data?
Are you worried about state actors breaking the encryption?
Yeah! It's been great for me. No detection issues or weird bugs. The mobile and TV apps are also great!