As long as you use proprietary OSes, do not ever update past what has come with the hardware(reinstall back to it if needed).
That's why there are still machines using windows xp still in use today.
That's where you will get the fastest/best experience.
If your mac came with Catalina(10.15.1), stay there and run that mf into the ground.
Never shut it down(you don't know if it will start back up if you do) and never update.
No, you don't need the latest version of the proprietary system.
It's only getting worse as time goes by and you don't have any way to modify it to improve it.
> I have a macbook pro, 32G ram, lightning fast nvme drive. There is NO REASON to upgrade the hardware.
That is not what Apple wants to hear.
They only want to hear the sound of the money.
You either come to accept that, or you stop buying their products.
It doesn't matter what you want or what you think, only what Apple wants.
As you said: with Fedora, it ran well and it probably isn't even as good as it could be unless optimized specifically for that hardware(Gentoo, or some BSD distro).
When the time comes and you need software that no longer has support for Catalina, then it's time to buy the newest mac that is "optimized" for the lastest version of the proprietary OS.
Otherwise, use the lastest version of the software that still works or try finding something else.
Just because everyone you know uses it, doesn't mean they can't use something else with you, maybe even understand for themselves why they shouldn't use Meta.
And it's very easy to do: you make a message for everyone you have as contact and tell them that whoever wants to continue to talk with you can continue doing so on signal, simplex, matrix, or whatever, explaining why you made this decision(meta bad, blah, blah) and tell them that in one month you'll delete your meta account(s).
At the end of that month, you do it. Remove any trace and very important: DON'T GO BACK on your decision(1 week, 1 month, 1 year) after. Whoever wants to talk, will do so wherever you told them to find you. Those that don't, well... they won't. And you'll also find out who actually cares enough to talk with you.
Hosting libre software on proprietary git forges will always result in those owning the forge doing something bad to its users and their code, sooner or later.
You either use libre software and have great speed while also having patched vulnerabilities(you can DIY if nothing else).
Or you can use proprietary software and never update to get good speed.
Or use patched proprietary software and have poor performance.
But never all three. You just can't have everything in this world.