As long as you use proprietary OSes, do not ever update past what has come with the hardware(reinstall back to it if needed). That's why there are still machines using windows xp still in use today. That's where you will get the fastest/best experience.

If your mac came with Catalina(10.15.1), stay there and run that mf into the ground. Never shut it down(you don't know if it will start back up if you do) and never update. No, you don't need the latest version of the proprietary system. It's only getting worse as time goes by and you don't have any way to modify it to improve it.

> I have a macbook pro, 32G ram, lightning fast nvme drive. There is NO REASON to upgrade the hardware.

That is not what Apple wants to hear. They only want to hear the sound of the money. You either come to accept that, or you stop buying their products. It doesn't matter what you want or what you think, only what Apple wants.

As you said: with Fedora, it ran well and it probably isn't even as good as it could be unless optimized specifically for that hardware(Gentoo, or some BSD distro).

When the time comes and you need software that no longer has support for Catalina, then it's time to buy the newest mac that is "optimized" for the lastest version of the proprietary OS.

Otherwise, use the lastest version of the software that still works or try finding something else.