I first ran into nano when I gave Gentoo a try. I had to edit a few config files, so I ran vi... no vi. Emacs? No Emacs. Well, shit, what am I supposed to do? So I went back a bit and read more carefully, apparently there was a thing called nano.So I ran that. Ew. It was a clone of an old DOS editor of all things. What kind of lunatic had ported that? Anyway I managed to do my edits with it, added normal editors to the system and was on my way.It was also the last time I used it.
I had to read it several times to understand what you meant, but I suspect that you're right.
Buying a full pc that will end up being potentially limited to gaming doesn't really make sense. Valve has a solution that's more integrated and probably better suited for most consumers.
Many hardware companies have the same problem, they can output some decent hardware, but some other series are true lemons (especially for Linux/Unix, but for a lesser extent, for that other system as well). And beforehand, it's not always easy to know which is which. It's a common issue with laptop makers where the hardware is often more esoteric.
You know how there's theory, and then there's practice?