As I mention always whenever this topic comes up, it might be my specific setup but don’t leave it off and plugged into a dock for long periods of time: it seems to discharge the battery and not realizing it’s happened. In my experience as long as you unplug it after shutting it off, there’s no downside.
What happens if you leave it plugged in for half an hour or more? After that, can you unplug it? Because at least for me, the dock can drain the battery (slowly) over time when the Deck is off, all the while the battery thinks it’s full. I would try keeping it on and plugged for a while, then unplug while it’s on.
A thing about the official dock, maybe it’s just my setup BUT: it drains the battery. It doesn’t look like it, but if it’s off or suspended, the Deck loses charge while connected to the dock, then you grab it to use it (and the battery is like 97%!) but within 5 minutes it’s completely dead. Again, it might be just my setup, but now I unplug the Deck from the dock once it’s off.
The main thing IMO is to get some hands on time with it. Figure what you want, what you like, and most importantly what you would like to see improved… and go from there. See if you prefer to use it as a console, or if you want more of a gaming computer and use regularly the desktop. Maybe you’ll want a dock and how you want it will depend on your needs. You get my point :D
Anyway for the laptop see if you like https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/ specifically the Nvidia one so it has the drivers pre installed. I use it “everywhere”
Funny, juuuust when they limit the service to 100 hours monthly.
Boosteroid has Linux apps, too. Maybe not too elegant for the Deck…