the distros you tried were… adventurous, to say the least, none of those would even occur to me. the my rule of thumb is:
everything else is for hobbyists and/or special use cases, not for people expecting to do actual work.
anyone dunking on the article, this is pretty far away from a how-to-lilst; it’s more of a “think about these things if you haven’t up until now” and as such a net positive. wrong community for it, though.
I’m gonna disagree on both counts.
I run fedora on my desktop and a bunch of laptops and have done so for years; I would never recommend it to a beginner, or even do the install and all the laborious post-install steps and then hand it over.
Plasma is closer to a standard desktop paradigm, but it has its stupid choices that aren’t welcome on a laptop - FOUR finger gestures, really? why?! also, it’s way too configurable so it’s super-easy to fuck up something without an easy way to reset it.
so, both the options you mentioned are natural progressions for an intermediate user, someone who started with an easy option like Ubuntu + Gnome, and then progressed because they don’t need the kiddie wheels no more; but not as first distro.
everybody recommending mint skipped over the fact that this is a convertible, i.e. has touch. mint/cinnamon/mate isn’t terribly optimized in that regard and is rocking X11, a headache a beginner doesn’t need nowadays. mint is a phenomenal choice for older laptops, but not this one.
with a heavy heart, I’m recommending Ubuntu. it runs Gnome, which is a way more modern DE, runs on Wayland so has solid gestures and touch support, and lastly, it is very beginner friendly. you’ll be able to sort out any potential issue as that’s the most widely used distro and has solutions and tutorials for practically everything.
once you’ve crossed over and gain some experience, you’ll inevitably start banging your head on the ceiling (snaps and such). by then you’ll have enough experience and knowledge to move to something better.
this is like month+ old info, at least mention that when posting. otherwise people assume it’s an update.
I deployed RocketChat on two different client installations (didn’t check the licensing you’re mentioning, I’ll have to look into that) and I run a Prosody instance (XMPP) on my own; tried Matrix for a short while and ran away from that mess as fast as I could. anyhow, although the messengers work without any significant issues or downtime, the amount of flak I get from non-tech normies about the client apps is staggering.
the apps just aren’t up to current UX standards. they’re used to Twitter and iMessage and Telegram quality UX, and getting used to these PoC-quality apps - both on mobile and desktop - makes them “feel icky”. I’ve had to intervene on a number of occasions when some of them transferred their business-related comms to other platforms because they just can’t/won’t get used to these apps.
check out dell latitude 5285/5290 2-in-1. they are Surface Pro lookalikes with detachable keyboards, but with way service-friendlier interior - easy to open and SSD, comms, battery can be easily replaced, whereas RAM is soldered. the screens (12" 1920x1200 IPS mutlitouch) are gorgeous and the hardware isn’t too shabby, kabylake (7xxxu) and kabylake-r (8xxxu), with standard UEFI BIOS so you can install Linux and have SecureBoot even. I can get them locally for $100-150, dependent on config and equipment (even less if they’re without battery and keyboard).
edit: yeah, I misunderstood your idea, I thought you wanted a cheap linux tablet. what you actually want is a fantasy - an ultra-portable device with huge battery autonomy running linux and such a thing doesn’t exist, for any kind of money.
namely, the mentioned dells are twice the heft of a normal android tablet and the battery autonomy is laughable; not only is it not an improvement over a normal laptop, it’s likely to be worse, as that thing’s essentially a laptop with extras, like touch, gyros, etc.
then comes the real hammer - touching the thing. Gnome and Plasma (and their derivatives) have touch support but if you’re coming from an android or iOS tablet, that support is in its infancy. it’s crude, inconsistent, flaky, and not very well propagated throughout the system. it’s way better than it was a few years ago, but this is not something you’ll want to hang your career or education on.
you can tweak the thing into something semi-usable, and for the price (around $100) that’s a worthwhile endeavour and cute hobby project. it bears repeating, it is not daily driver material, and that includes way pricier solutions - saw a Ryzen 6-series the other day for like $700; everything I’ve written applies to it as well.
regarding the pricy enclosures, there are vastly cheaper eGPU solutions especially if you’re able to utilise the on-board M.2 or mini-PCI slot. if you don’t move the laptop around, it’s a viable option. this would be an example - not an endorsment. you’d need a $15 PSU to power the graphics and it works well in linux, with the hotpluggability being the primary issue; if you’re willing to shutdown before attaching the eGPU, close to no issues.
you can run it as graphics card (i.e. utilize its display outputs) or just use the laptop’s display with optionally switching between the onboard and discrete graphics.
no help to you, but my god is it convoluted and complex; every year or so I look up if there’s been some change in that regard and every time I stop reading halfway through the setup instructions. maybe next year…