Nice, I'll link that later as well - the gsettings trick would have been great the first time I installed (trying to rotate the screen via tab and arrow keys was painful!)
I like your point about the anchoring effect of the GPD price. I think that influenced me exactly as you say. It's a shame about the few rough edges; this is so nearly a very compelling gadget!
I don't use it as a daily driver any more (I did for a bit while traveling, for obvious reasons), but it's been very useful as bench computer. Doesn't take up as much room as a laptop on a desk, has both a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port for serial consoles and data transfers, is proper x86 so I don't have issues with running proprietary flashers on it. I think it's running 18.04 right now because I needed to flash an old Jetson board.
Bench machine makes sense. I have a very locked down MacBook for work and I don't much like macOS - a little Linux machine for my personal stuff that takes up almost no space on office days seems very appealing. I'll see how that goes!
I saw Jeff Geerling had a neat RISC-V machine with exactly the same form factor too: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/sipeeds-new-handheld-...
I like your point about the anchoring effect of the GPD price. I think that influenced me exactly as you say. It's a shame about the few rough edges; this is so nearly a very compelling gadget!
Do you use yours much having had it a while?