It would be good if the EU could make USB-C docking functionality a requirement for all phones the way they made USB-C power a requirement. I doubt that Google could do it even if they wanted to.

As an aside Google REALLY doesn’t want companies to follow the example of Huawei with HarmonyOS. If any big player said “we will license HarmonyOS or develop our own thing if Google makes us do something we don’t like” then Google would give in.

Phones for desktop use is something I’m working on now. Not for old devices but for ultra portable work. I just paid $215AU for a Note9 with 8G of RAM. Until a couple of months ago my main laptop had 8G of RAM, that’s enough to do most non-server things you want to do with a computer.

For my home workstation running Debian/Bookworm I started running Wayland-Plasma when Xorg mysteriously refused to work after replacing my video card. Wayland just worked and really had no issues for me so while I’m sure I could have solved the X11 problem I didn’t have a real need to.

I also changed my laptop to Wayland-Plasma more recently. A problem I had was in setting up the right modes for external monitors on laptops but that seems to work OK now. Generally things just work.