> I haven't found any other way to copy photos from an iPhone into a laptop
Both SyncThing and Resilio Sync work well for this, but require your "server"/laptop to be on in order to sync.
You can also just plug in the device, and it should mount as USB storage on both Windows and Linux.
(I have no financial interest in either pieces of software, other than regularly needing to recommend them to my PhotoStructure users).