Mastodon is a great way to follow folks on Lemmy, as Lemmy is focused more on communities around topics than individual contributors. The foil to that, then, is that individuals can be easily recognized as regular contributors within those communities – but only because you happen to see their usernames often enough, not because Lemmy is designed to follow them.
Because of these design choices, I like leveraging Mastodon to hone in on ICs who tend to post interesting content, and share it via my Mastodon network. Likewise, it can be fun to see toots from Mastodon referenced in the communities I follow here, as they help facilitate good discussion.
There are give and takes.
Thinkpads – a laptop with a rich history of Linux use – can be bought with an integrated 4090. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 can be configured with an i9, plenty of flexibility for drive space and RAM, and an RTX 4090. It’ll run you, even used, around $3k to $4k, which is the equivalent of a desktop replacement. But it’ll be pretty doggone compatible with any Linux distro you’d like.