[OJFord]

> And after those 4-5 years, wont one have to get a new laptop at some point, upgrade to newer OS version, and adjust to whatever changes the FOSS projects like Gnome/KDE/etc did in the previous years all from the beginning?

But that's part of what I love about linux, my text-based configuration doesn't have to change because I upgrade, unlike on Mac where the name of some `defaults write` key suddenly renames or disappears altogether.

In the rare cases that something in a Linux distribution changes so much it upends your config, you're just a package install away from getting the old behaviour back until you want (if ever) to deal with it.