There's an app called BlackHole, but the music library it provides is very small and oriented in music from India.
Nuuskis
Try Manjaro Sway. Wayland can't get any better than with Sway. Of you prefer to not read the docs and confog by yourself, then go with KDE. Literally zero reasons to use xorg anymore. I've used Sway 2-3 months after dwm and regret a lot I didn't switch earlier to Wayland.
Who's surprised? IBM is owned 8% by Blackrock so this shouldn't surprise anybody.
Why everybody creates their own project instead of joining the current ones? Bus factor is a good measure in any small project.
I hope you have ssd and maxed out ram. 15 years is Core2Duo right?
Try HaikuOS, KolibriOS and the third option could be Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I'm sure Gnome and Kde will run just fine, but lxqt is marketed as the ost lighweight Linux DE.
But try Haiku and Kolibri for real even they don't run on Linux Kernel.
Brodie made also a dunny video representing what Asahi said about it. Just 2 days ago Asahi Linux had a stepback becaus of some package was written for xorg and was broken even for xorg.
The best configuration out of it is represented in Manjaro Sway. Try itnin Live mode. Format your usb stick with Ventoy2Disk and it'll be the last time you'll ever format it.
Try Sway as a Wayland WM.
What kind of question is this? Sell the Framework and use the money for maintenance of T480. Buy new batteries (Lenovo original if you can find a source) and dual-pipe heatsink (if your unit is missing the Nvidia gpu). Clean the dust and with compressed air and replace the thermal paste.
That T480 will serve you eternally. Especially with Linux. If someone is able to port Coreboot with Coreboot configurator into that model, donate some coffee money for the devs.
What are you even asking? There's literally zero reasons you to force you to prefer Framework to T480. And some other might prefer Macbook over anything etc. The personal preferences aren't a reason to force or argue.
When you take Pop_OS! into account?
I used to use Global Menu stil 2 years and it was a mess. For me, Wayland is a gift from gods. The screen tearing went away and it feels more snappier. When I rarely need an external monitor, gone is the need of xrandr-plumbing to make different resolutions to work.