I think the beginning sets the context - a history of business models related to Unix, and later Linux + Open Source software. It's important to learn from it.
It also shows that the challenges of the clash between capitalism and software freedom are constantly evolving, and presents how our battles were won (or lost) in the past.
Oh, and as for the touch UIs, not much luck if GNOME doesn't work well enough. KDE can be made to run well with touch input, but for me it needed some work to configure it. But I liked it afterwards.
There are Mobile Linux UIs (which might run better on tight resources) but I am afraid they might not be good for multitasking on a tablet screen.
Mobile Linux distributions for smartphones might offer some hints on how to tackle your problems - these apps are created in a convergent way, which makes them work well on laptops, tablets and PCs alike. Look for an alternate file manager, for example, to replace Nautilus. Check out https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/
What do you think about using a keyboard-based workflow: hit Super button (or click on Activities) to make the fullscreen menu pop-up, then write the first few letters of the app name, and finally hit Enter? Search-based workflow is my favourite way to navigate app menu, on GNOME and KDE alike.
Maybe it's obvious, but how about Kodi?
It has support for CEC (for utilizing your TV's remote through HDMI), of course there are other input options as well.
There's plenty of plugins to support online video services. Needs some work to configure them, and sometimes it requires maintenance when a plugin stops working, but I was in general happy with the way it worked while I used it for a few years.
I imagine Meta will simply want to ensure that all content will be added on their servers. This allows to enshittify it for everyone (Threads users and those who federated alike). Federated instances will see the amount of ads included with Threads stuff, and will have to defederate. Then Facebook says 'hey, we made it possible to join us, but nobody wants'.
I'm guessing it's not a big deal to replace it with a third party text messaging open source app; I'm not sure about the Dialer, though.
It would be an interesting solution, to port a few mobile Linux apps to Android (some of them are already there) - I'm a bit worried about potential maintenance burden for platform support; but it could benefit KDE/GNOME apps by getting feedback from a bigger bunch of users.
Looks like the ecosystem still needs another year or two, but it's going forward steadily.
From what I see, it is about their recent decision to defederate from two other big Lemmy instances (sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world), because these instances (where the registration is open, contrary to beehaw) bring a lot of trolls and moderation burden for Beehaw admins. They had a chat with sh.itjust.works admin staff and both are in agreement that until there are better mod tools, there's not much more that can be done for now.
They chose an action that is not harsh enough for them to be "fired" as mods, yet is strong enough to be visible.
It reminds me (to a certain extent) of absurd protests against communist authorities, which happened in my country back in Cold War times, ie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Alternative . The aim is to make the authorities look like idiots, using force to make them stop. You have to be creative, when you're fighting with someone who has total control over the platform, for me their move makes sense.
Worth mentioning, this also brings the first ever stable release of Mobian: https://blog.mobian-project.org/posts/2023/06/10/bookworm/
Hardware support still needs more love, as Linux phone ecosystem depends entirely on volunteers writing the drivers, but we're getting there.
I'm as skeptical as you are, but at least they automatically preinstall a few useful gaming apps by default, ie. LatencyFlex.