Fair enough, I agree with most of the things you said. The one I got is made of aluminum and doesn’t feel cheap/thin at all, I guess they have both cheap and “professional” options. Personally I wasn’t looking for something really unique, just for something that had a decent performance for a laptop and works well with Linux. I searched around and this model ticked all my most important boxes.

I don’t know whether Clevo engineers throught about Linux when they designed the device or not, but I can say after configuring it properly, it works without any flaws.

As for buying straight from China, I consider the idea, but at the time I didn’t find a way to buy it for cheaper than buying from a reseller. I’m in Europe, perhaps in the US or in Asia it would be different.

What is it that you don’t like about Clevo chassis? I bought one a few years ago and I love it. It’s elegant and sturdy in my opinion. It’s also easily serviceable, so what’s to complain about it?

That’s very likely the case, but I’d say it makes little difference: any self-hosted application supporting web technology is also a desktop application.

I’ve never had the chance to work with the RAW format, but I think Photoprism should handle it transparently. Depending on your area of knowledge, the setup might feel a bit convoluted though.

So… this is going to be a debloated lightweight distro (or just a DE?) with official support for not-so-fresh hardware? I don’t fully understand.