I used to have a control panel [1] with physical switches for various tasks on my desk. I built it mainly to switch between multiple VPNs and switch bluetooth audio mode between high-quality unidirectional A2DP and low-quality bidirectional HSP for meetings, mounting network drives.
But once I moved from XFCE/xubuntu to KDE (on gentoo, later opensuse), I noticed I don't need it anymore. Bluetooth switching works automatically and NetworkManager has nice widget, SMB/SFTP works out of box.
Now it become a toy space rocket control panel for my kids.