I don't own one but I'm looking at the framework 13 for my next machine. It has great reviews and fully support Arch. Its price is the main criticism against this machine, though there's some arguments to justify it but no need to open a trolling post :)

Neomutt (with notmuch) is not easy when starting from scratch. Luckily there are some configurations online that get you up and running quickly. It still requires some efforts to get use to it and configured to your detailed and specific needs. I put sweat to build mine but it worth every single drop.
That being said that's what makes its strength. It's not an email client, it's your email client. Once it's configured, it's good forever and using anything else feels like a pain.

While I've tried both, I am not sensitive to any of these trends. I'm just glad to see some alternatives that can fit anyone needs. That's the power of the open-source.

Although I understand the reasoning beyond the language used in this post, I'm sad to read that hardened privacy is considered a power user thing.

Khal is also my app of choice for calendars, though it may not suit OP requirements since files are .ics Everything is kept in sync on my phone with Etar and DavX5.
Note that khal itself is the CLI aspect. It's interactive interface (ikhal) is really the TUI aspect of this app.

ikhal is great to manage events but I prefer to use the command-line to create events. And this is the only minor complaint I have against khal: its lengthy commands and lack of user friendly dates support (like "today", "next mon"...). Luckily all of that is easily fixable with a script which I should upload on my codeberg one day... I actually ended up adding edition and deletion support using (neo)vim and fzf so I don't use ikhal anymore but only creating events is really faster and easier with my script compare to using ikhal.

I've been using xterm, urxvt, and st. Also tested alacrity, kitty, and wezterm. Your shell also plays a critical role in your terminal usage (but I won't deviate here).
For my use-case, the latter are overkill so I stayed with st. The only missing feature for me was image support even though I use it sporadically. To cover that I use a script that relies on ueberzug or ucollage if I need to browse folders.

I've wrote a small post about ucollage if you're interested.

Great idea. Thanks for sharing. Great choice of laptop BTW ;)

If only asking the same thing for non-computer jobs would be accepted. I always have to use my personal laptop.

Thanks. That does not not really address my question but I certainly share your view as to not be married to a brand. My personal history and this post question are actually going that route.

You're right.

Exactly.

Right, nobody said it's never needed (but it should be rare, especially for WiFi). What's weird is that on this item link itself it's stated that "Linux drivers are part of the upstream Linux kernel." And from the table there the driver should be available unless you're running a pretty old kernel.

I can see that from a server maintenance point of view. After having read so many great things about NixOS, I may have exaggerated my expectation and I may be the problem for being a user with too limited needs to get the full benefits of NixOS.

For me this single config file doesn't save that much additional files and most of them would be files you configure only once during installation. Nonetheless I can see how "easier" it would be to save one file instead of 3 to reproduce your system and I can only imagine how much better it is from a server point of view.