I've done this in a project recently when I was trying out different third party autocomplete components.
I had my own autocomplete component that I would use wherever I needed an autocomplete, and that component would render the third party autocomplete and supply it with the props it required. When I needed to switch out which third party component I was using, I only had to change code in one place, instead of changing it everywhere I was using autocomplete.
I believe that both the Django Core team and Tom Christie (DRF author) have stated that they have no desire to see DRF brought into Django, as that would tie DRF updates to Django updates, which would potentially slow down DRF releases.
I'm curious about what is making you want to move away from a MacBook to a linux laptop. I've been using a Lenovo G580 with Ubuntu for about 3 years for web development at home, and a MacBook at work. I vastly prefer the Mac to my personal Ubuntu laptop.
One of the reasons that I prefer the Mac is that the dev tooling is fairly effortless to get set up and use. On Ubuntu, I'm often spending MUCH more time getting tooling set up than on the Mac.