The funny thing is that I encountered the exact same issues OP complains about (network not available = let's stall forever, insert USB drive = let's crash hard) on various mainstream distros. Especially the first one is super common and on various levels and through various protocols.

I'm curious, what games would you need Windows for?

Between Wine frontends and Steam, I haven't really booted Windows for almost a year now, and I play a healthy balance of modern and ancient games of every production quality.

The only thing I miss is ShareX, which is a screenshot tool that seems to have been designed with me exactly as its sole target audience, because it is incredible, intuitively discoverable and packed with features that Just Work. Yes, Linux also has some screenshot tools, but they are at most 1% of what ShareX is. (And it doesn't work under Wine :(... )

Me too. Ubuntu 22.04. It's come a long way since I last Linux in... 1999 and 2003! Haha!

Now I'm even considering FreeBSD as I friggin' love that OS. It's rock solid, predictable, and fast. I just need to make sure a few things can be made to work, even if it's via the browser, like Zoom.

i threw in the towel as well after debloating the same win10 install for the millionth time.

switched to Arch (EndeavourOS KDE/Plasma) and life is sane again; enjoyable, even!

i do miss Affinity products, tho, which cannot even run in Wine/Proton :(