I have been using Linux on laptops as main/only compute since around 1997 (started with an Inspiron 4000, PII-400 IIRC), Dell is generally extremely boring and very Linux/BSD compatible. I have been buying gently used Precision models (typically using local marketplace, Craigslist in USA) as they tend to have better build quality and non-janky custom parts (think “winmodem”). They last forever, pretty much every Linux/BSD distro works. The most important thing is to stay away from Broadcom chips and look for Intel eth/wifi. Stay away from Inspiron to avoid hardware problems, in modern times those are the bottom of the barrel janky hardware.

The Dell Latitude line used by businesses are even more boring than Precisions and really always have been - their BIOS has a somewhat unique charging profile “always plugged in” to extend battery life - I use two ancient E6330 models tuned to super low power modes as mini-servers (think anything you’d use a raspberry Pi for) that have been chugging away for probably 5+ years just running cron jobs, backups, Syncthing services and whatever I toss on them. Throw an SSD in anything and it just works - power goes out, batteries act as UPS. $100 USD each, “just work”.

Thinkpads have always been a Linux favorite, at least the old models when IBM owned the brand but not too sure about the Lenovo modern ones. Last Thinkpad I owned was a 32bit one back in like maybe 2010 and it worked just fine. They tend to be more expensive used than Dells (retain their purchase price better, like a nice used auto).

This is unfortunately a choice the Nautilus (GNOME) folks have taken; in other file managers (Thunar for XFCE, Caja for MATE, etc.) the ability to use custom actions are a first class citizen. Within Nautilus, the nautilus-actions project was superseded by the filemanager-actions project which was then archived: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/filemanager-actions - a custom GNOME action might be something like gio open /path/to/terminal.desktop %d (where %d is the directory from Nautilus)

There are 3rd party attempts to recreate what was stripped out of/abandoned in Nautilus such as this one: https://github.com/bassmanitram/actions-for-nautilus

Went down the rabbit hole for you while drinking some tea listening to the rain - it looks like in the future there is a new app/proposal for FreeDesktop to use xdg-terminal-exec as the new/default way and it’s hard coded into the GNOME “gio” code over here (ctrl+f search xdg-terminal-exec): https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/blob/main/gio/gdesktopappinfo.c

That said, it looks like the nautilus-open-terminal Nautilus extension is shipped as part of gnome-terminal so it’s hard coded to run that terminal not using the above code. Instead, you’d need to leverage a different extension called nautilus-open-any-terminal for now until the landscape changes: https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal

(disclaimer: not using GNOME/Nautilus or Fedora, theorycraft from me)

I’m familiar with the news about the brick - in the past I’ve had this problem (I think it was a bricked… pixel 2?) and faced similar power off issues. Keep trying what you’re trying but in various ways - I vaguely recall that I had to press volume up first and then hold power or something like that (meaning pressing them both at once or power first didn’t work). One of the various combos you’re trying is supposed to be the one that forces it off after ~30secs of holding but a fuzzy memory reminds me it was real finicky to actually get working. Worst case scenario, just let the battery die. :(