DisplayPort is widely available on business-class laptops, gaming laptops, all modern discrete graphics cards, all modern integrated video chipsets (although not all motherboards/devices will actually provide a port), etc.
You're actually diametrically opposite of reality here: the only devices which do not widely support DisplayPort are cheap crap intended for the low-end consumer market, and stuff exclusively targeted at the living room market like consoles and media-stick PCs.
Even something as pedestrian as my old Thinkpad from 2010 supports it.
Every modern desktop graphics card has display port connectors. A common configuration is 3 display port + 1 hdmi, making hdmi the legacy connector. My five year old laptop has display port. It's not as rare as you think.
At least on desktop GPUs, you tend to get a lot more DisplayPorts than HDMI. You're lucky to get more than a single HDMI port, but three or more DPs are common.
Question is why (all these devices would prefer HDMI).
Anyway, Thunderbolt ports route DisplayPort.
> not sure about the state of the desktop GPU market
High end cards support DP for a long time already.
> Apple pre-USB-C-crap-series laptops
Totally incorrect. Before USB-C, there was Thunderbolt 1&2, which was over a Mini-DisplayPort connector.
Display port connector, but only PCIe signaling, no other protocols implemented.
Except for Displayport. Seeing, as you know, half of HN has MBPs they plug into DP'd desktop monitors, including me.
No, the ports on the Macbook are PCIe + Displayport. The Apple displays are PCIe only. The parent was specifically talking about Thunderbolt. You aren't using anything Thunderbolt when you plug into a DP monitor.
The rest of the market - consumer Windows laptops, Apple pre-USB-C-crap-series laptops, gaming consoles, cable TV boxes, other home theater stuff on source side, as well as TVs and projectors on the sink side - speaks HDMI only.