Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run Windows on my personal laptop - not because I love it, but because it certainly used to have a huge strong-hold on media and games apps, which I wanted a way of consuming. I no longer game, but as I understand it, support for Linux has greatly improved. Also I used to watch Sky (UK), which is only available for Windows users (first because they were literally using Silverlight up until about a year ago, and now…
Spotify works fine on Linux in my experience though I mostly use Spotify on my iPhone, not on my Linux desktop but I sometimes use it there and don’t have any complaints. Linux has excellent support for VPN. VPN providers on the other hand may be bad at providing proper guidance for Linux users. In that case I suggest either switching to a VPN provider that has the guides you need, or searching for good guides made b…
VPN support would be fine wrt OpenVPN, but I'm using NordVPN. To be fair I just checked and they also have a .deb so that's fine too.
Drive is a pain, Dropbox suggestion is good. IIRC I've used "Grive" before, and it worked, but wasn't a delight to use.
Definitely agree on hardware. Even the XPS range from Dell which offers Linux pre-installed has been pretty choppy in the past. I'm using a Thinkpad now and imo it's the best option.
I can't do macs, that's the one thing!