Funny, I got almost the same machines -- I had a Thinkpad X1 Yoga 2016 and before, I had a T420. These are amazing machines. I am writing this text on my T420 w

Funny, I got almost the same machines -- I had a Thinkpad X1 Yoga 2016 and before, I had a T420. These are amazing machines. I am writing this text on my T420 which is now 8 years old but still has 8GB RAM, 1TB SSD, with this being better then many "high end" laptops selled nowadays. Towards the software: I'm a Linux user since 15yrs. I ended with vanilla Ubuntu, because that's a good compromise of unspectacular updates ~ every year. I enjoy Linux for having access to the developer setups I love: Plain, easy. I code C/Cpp projects with Kate and GNU make. I am frequently vowed for my artwork done with Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, Libreoffice despite I am not a designer. I frequently install "fat" non-distribution codes such as http://visit.llnl.gov http://visit.llnl.gov at ~/bin, where also non-open-source codes such as Mathematica or Maple go. Generally, I prefer minimalistic tools over fat solutions, despite I acknowledge the power of Mathematica or a Microsoft Windows installation inside Virtualbox or KVM/libvirt/virtmanager. I even have to admit, I enjoy KDE and, as I said, I enjoy a decent graphical editor such as Kate. I work on command-line-only tools on servers very often, but I could never warm up with vim. I just never took the time to climb the learning curve of vim. But I also don't want to work on servers with VNC/X2Go, because ssh is just faster. That's why I use the tools available when in place. I'm probably a Linux opportunist: I use the Linux desktop because it is accessible, on any machine -- much more accessible then Mac OS X or Windows.