I just made the switch from Win 10 to Bazzite Linux some two weeks ago. It worked so great that I should have done it a long time ago.

Do it! The barrier to entry for gamedev is ridiculously low with something like Unity or Godot, and nowadays you can make a complete game with 100% open-source tools.

Most companies still change their laptops’ keyboard layouts in random negative ways every year; ship with stupid screen resolutions, woefully bad speakers, and disappointing touchpads; and stuff the most powerful processor and GPU in there and don’t focus enough on tuning the cooling, power usage, and fan profiles.

I don't really get these nitpicks. If you're planning to use the laptop as your daily driver, do what every other power user does and get a set of good peripherals.

That's some pretty wild FUD right there.

Oh, hi! I also use Kubuntu, but I love Snaps! I use them for everything. I even tried to use a Snap-version of the kernel, but it completely destroyed my system so I had to reinstall... but other than that, they're great.

I've got only one machine left running Windows 10 at home: a desktop PC I use exclusively for gaming. I increasingly look forward to purging Windows from it and installing Bazzite when the EOL date comes around.