I see this mostly as pre-work for supporting the Steam machine. But nevertheless it is a Big Deal for the Handheld Market because now SteamOS now becomes an even better option for most of the Handhelds available. Maybe some manufacturers might even think about shipping their devices with SteamOS.
Me personally I am very happy with the Lenovo Legion Go S on Steam OS (just bought the Windows version and replaced it with Steam OS). With the better support we can feal more comfortable to recommend SteamOS for users of other devices.
Even for M1 MacBooks Asahi does not support things like Thunderbolt, DP Alt Mode, Fingerprint Reader, etc. Also Power management is still a problem because Apple doing things differently then other ARM devices.
https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/
If I am Buying a 2000€+ Laptop I want everything to work. Not flawlessly, but at least working. And Asahi is not there. That's what I mean with "not suitable as a daily driver". If this is good enough for someone, thats fine. I am happy for them and they should enjoy their device.
But most other people buying such laptops would not be happy.
In my experience Power Management is broken on Windows and Linux the same way. Some laptops do work better then others, but none of both Systems works fully reliable.
My work HP Elitebook 845 G8 also has the problem of waking itself up in my backpack and boiling to Death (empty Battery). And it is running on Windows.
Don't know if Apple with their MacBooks have similar problems.
This dock does not fix any of the problems I mentioned. It is (like all the others) just a simple metall plate with a PCIe and OcuLink Connector...So again a flimsy solution for tinkerers at best.
Thunderbolt 5 is, from a Performance point of view, a rather inferior solution compared to OcuLink performing in a lot of cases worse. See the testing results from "Try some tech": https://www.pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/1020x/2025/10/Thunderbolt-5-vs-Oculink-Youtube-Try-Some-Tech-pcgh.jpg
Therefor I would rather take the Downside of a non-Hot-plug solution like OcuLink. But I want a proper Docking solution for a Desk and not this "bare metal" stuff we have right now.
As long as Asahi does not support the M5 this is not an option. And since it will always be lacking behind due to the need of reverse engineering everything it is not a suitable daily Driver. But it is a cool project nevertheless.
Since the last response in the linked thread is quite old I think we have to revisit this in 2026. I hope that the latest update to GNOME 50 solved this. On my 34" 3440x1440 Display 1x scaling is just fine. But I guess this could be different on 2880 x 1920 on a 13.5" Screen.
Let's hope that "Ubuntu certified" means that all the Hardware and its Firmware is propperly working. But to be 100% sure we will need to wait for the first units to ship and some reviews.
Just out of curiosity: What is it that you actually need HDR for in a professional context? Movie/Film making? Because apart from that I only see HDR used in media consumption related topics (playing Games, watching 4K HDR movies).
Still need to wait for more details on what Netgear agreed on with the FCC to get the conditional approval. Otherwise it is hard to evaluate if this is a good or bad thing.
Me personally I am using a Lenovo Yoga 370 (don't know what an update to date comparable model from Lenovo would be) with GNOME as DE.
For PDF annotations I mainly use Xournal++, which works quite well for annotating PDF's and highlighting certain parts. You can get more information in the Xournal++ Documentation at https://xournalpp.github.io/guide/pdfs/
This is something very important:
Don't focus on aplications (FOSS or not) but on open data formats and proper import/export mechanisms so you can switch applications easily.
I see this mostly as pre-work for supporting the Steam machine. But nevertheless it is a Big Deal for the Handheld Market because now SteamOS now becomes an even better option for most of the Handhelds available. Maybe some manufacturers might even think about shipping their devices with SteamOS.
Me personally I am very happy with the Lenovo Legion Go S on Steam OS (just bought the Windows version and replaced it with Steam OS). With the better support we can feal more comfortable to recommend SteamOS for users of other devices.