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Many years ago, I carefully shopped for and purchased a Thinkpad W530 laptop to meet the requirements of running Cisco VIRL for network virtualization. Quad-core i7 that could take 32 GB RAM. It met the requirements for VMware Workstation and the VIRL simulations I wanted to run. Mainly used VIRL to learn on "real" Cisco IOS, where Packet Tracer showed its limitations. That PC was my primary PC for years and not just for running VIRL.
The W530 has Nvidia Optimus and I typically ran with the Nvidia only so I could support higher-resolution on external monitors and didn't have to deal with the pains of Optimus on Linux. Over the years I ran Windows on it, Ubuntu, Fedora, and primarily Debian. Fedora was a pain in that I had to recompile the VMware kernel modules every time the kernel was updated. Debian for the most part just worked and I found had the easiest Nvidia driver process for running the non-free drivers. Trade off was that I ran Debian stable so for some applications I attempted to run, dependencies could not be easily met, making using those applications more difficult. I looked at an easy rolling release to run so I could get newer packages, etc.. I really like KDE so I tried KDE Neon. Installer wouldn't load on the W530. Really wanted to use SUSE Tumbleweed. Couldn't get it to connect to my wireless network. Think it had something to do with my passphrase's not being escaped correctly. Kept coming back to Debian as it just worked and somewhere along the release cycle, allowed you to do EASY disk encryption with the install.
Within the past two years, I started playing with BSDs and quickly decided that OpenBSD was the easiest to get up and running quickly to a desktop environment. I struggled with doing disk encryption in my first attempts and didn't have a clue about some of the default window managers and how to operate them. I quickly decided I preferred cwm and set about learning the BSD way of doing things. For the most part, I found I could probably live with OpenBSD, but I also found myself spending way too much time having to configure things to my liking or learning how to do things in BSD. Certainly was sweet running a desktop environment with less than 80 MB RAM in use.
I spent WAY too much time restless and unsatisfied as if my life depended on my choice of OS. Spent too much time reinstalling and reconfiguring and hopping between Linux, and Windows, and BSD, instead of using the computer as a tool to serve my needs. I have also done similar things with digital music formats and streaming services, in search of a perfection that won't be found, instead of enjoying the music. I also went through the same madness running different Android variants on older phones.
It didn't help that the Thinkpad made it easy to swap SSDs in and out, allowing me to obssessively play and re-install, etc..
I decided that all of this tinkering was not in my personal best interest and was keeping me from doing/learning other things.
So as Stephen King once said about writing, "Kill your darlings." I decided to let it go.
I want to love and run OpenBSD, but I know I will spend too much time tweaking and playing and not doing other productive things.
A few weeks ago, I purchased a MacBook Air M1 and intend to make it my primary and only PC and give up my old Thinkpad, which I had hardly been using for its intended network simulation purpose. I am happy to have shell access to do the Unix-y cli things I like without having the hackiness of running say Windows Subsystem for Linux. I get a fanless PC with excellent battery life, a great display, in a thin and simple design. Best benefit for me which justifies the cost though, is I CAN'T EASILY FUCK WITH IT. No swapping hard drives or distro hopping. It forces me to be OK with the hardware and software and limits my choices. I am free now to tinker, play around, and learn higher-level and more important things, as well as being free to use my weekends and evenings for more non-computing things.
In purchasing the M1 Air, I am letting go of the older Thinkpad, as well as the potential of running/learning more networking virtually. I am ready to let go of both.
My idea of minimalism in computing was that I would only run the software I needed and do as much from cli as I could in the smallest resources available. I have adjusted my thinking a bit in wanting tools that just work, keeping me from having to make a thousand decisions and configurations, and get on with the business of living.
As much as I do not like some of Apple's business practices, the product is excellent, and the cost justified, considering the trade-off in life time recovered.