Docker is definitely a problem, although newer versions have implemented new functionality that may have significantly reduced this. I can't really tell however, as I'm stuck on too many Zoom calls all day long and Zoom absolutely murders my battery life.

I haven’t tested it personally but you may be able to get some of that battery life back by using the web version of Zoom in Safari. That tends to force video chat services to use hardware accelerated video codecs which are considerably easier on battery.

And that's not just for Mac's, the same can help on Linux devices. It's somewhat hilarious that running a non-native app gets you better hardware accel but here we are.

I don't know about zoom specifically, but aren't most web conferencing "native" apps just electron anyway?

Indeed they tend to be however the underlying electron base tends, imo experience, to be outdated and comparatively hard to configure

Maybe the web browser is the OS now. Does that make the OS just a hardware abstraction layer?

I think that's generally accepted as true for some classification of people.

That's why chromebooks are an idea that was perhaps too early (and hardware too anaemic)