Very similar here, windows 11 being shittier and forced further pissing me off as windows 10 was supposed to be their last release shifting to a service model.
I've still yet to see a convincing reason windows 11 is an improvement in any way over 10.
Then steam decks came out with a solid proton version, and my only reason to stay on windows evaporated. I didn't even try dual booting windows.
What changed? I thought that is still what they did.
Same thing for any other software, see if you can get it running in wine, and see what the alternatives are and try them out until you find a solution you like. You need to accept there may be change, and may need to experiment and hit up Google to find solutions, but solutions do exist.
From a quick Google search, i found about 4/5 potential open source options
FreeCAD would probably be what I try first, but it's hardly the only option and seen some people complain that it feels archaic (but it's FOSS). I've also seen draftsight recommended a few times, and it has a free trial but is not free.
Also apparently fusion360 has a web interface that may be usable.
Just checked the app on my phone, 0 bites used, I don't really think they get any live data from it.
As much as i dislike google, chromebooks are perfect for anyone tech illiterate that just need a simple web browser that works. Every family member I've recommended a chromebook to has not needed additional tech support for it, which IMO, is a truly impressive accomplishment on google's behalf.
To be fair, I didn't really focus on the biggest annoyance I've had with spaces in the file name: going between terminals and the GUI, most filenames you can copy and paste with wild abandon, but filenames with spaces always require special care, sometimes stripping the auto completed escaped space from file names from the terminal, or quoting or escaping the space when taking one from the GUI.
You are correct, that is how I worked around the issue and why I mentioned that work around in my original post
for f in *.txt; do cat $f; done
Will error for example. It works fine for filenames without space, but if the filename has space in it, it will be interpreted wrong. But if your testing batch doesn't have spaces in the filename, you won't see the issue until it's used on a file that does. Note 'cat' is a placeholder, any function/script that can be used on a file here will have the same issue.
Something similar to that caught me last week while I was unzipping multiple mods in bulk for a game.
The problem is really that space is an argument separator, so to safely handle filenames with spaces you need to handle them special, either by escaping them, quoting the entire thing. This means that the filename with spaces can't be just copy pasted wherever you want, you have handle them special. It adds complications that are resolved by just using a separator that isnt used for other things, like underscore, or dash. Dot I also don't like as much as it's used as a separator for extensions, but that's a far easier problem to handle by just ignoring all but the last dot, leaving only one really bad edge case (a file that does not have an extension, that uses dot separator in its filename having the filesystem imply a wrong extension.
I wonder if the steam deck will work for you. Its sacrifice of physical keyboard for portability will probably be the deal breaking issue if I were to guess, but not sure. I've seen plenty of people use them as computers for various field projects not game related. It's cheapest is 350 if you don't need a lot storage on the device and the storage is upgradeable. It's compatible with normal USB c hubs for if you do need a physical keyboard or w/e. There are definitely some hangups that may make it undesirable and from what you described some of them are definitely possible, ie if you want to pull it out in the field and do a lot of typing without setting up a dock and whatnot, it won't work for your needs. But if the fieldwork with it is mostly just start a program and connect a USB data source, and most typing will be somewhere with a desk (home office or w/e) then it may work.
I was personally looking for a Linux compatible laptop a while back (admittedly I asked the wrong community), and eventually came to the conclusion that my wife's steam deck was actually a great solution for my needs, the main times I needed a keyboard I could just setup a simple dock and plug one it (though if you get a USBC or Bluetooth keyboard the only use for the dock is for holding it upright or additional peripherals), and most of my on the go use of it doesn't need a lot of typing.