> have you given pop_os a try for the hdpi/multimonitor issue?

A rule I made for myself when shifting to Linux is 'no distro hopping'. I want to spend as much of my computer time programming, and as little faux-sysadmining as I can.

So no, I haven't tried pop_os. I'll have another survey of available distributions next time I change laptops, but thats a couple of years off yet which is a long time in the Linux distro world ;)