It is the usual "Well it works for me" that you see in all Linux forums, since its inception, and when it works and you have to jump through several weekends trying to configure EFI booting, well it is those pesky OEMs not wanting to take the FOSS culture into their money maker.

Seems like there's a fair few other commenters who haven't had that issue as well. I'm also going with bad hardware or user error until you actually link to the issue or even say what distro you were using.

Did you try on different hardware, or on a different USB port, or with a different keyboard? Did you try a different distro? Which Window Manager was it? You mentioned decryption, what encryption was it, and how was that set up? By what method did you install the distro? Did you ever get it working? Could be a weird USB chipset on your motherboard.

It seems like an odd complaint, because most people don't have the problem you experienced.

I bought a Ryzen minipc and the wifi didn't work on it with a "fresh install" of Windows. I didn't just give up, I downloaded the drivers onto a USB stick and fixed it. It'd be nice if everything worked immediately, but unfortunately that's not the world we live in.

I'm defensive of Linux because without Linux we're trapped in whatever monetized and locked-down hell Windows and Apple are generous enough to provide us.

Sure Linux is not perfect but I'd still want it to succeed no matter how much effort it was to get a keyboard working. Also because I actually think Linux works really great for my purposes. I have to mess with it initially to get it working, but once it's working it rarely breaks and happily chugs on forever. No forced updates, no bullshit. I feel like I actually own my PC.

Just how I like it.

No matter what OS or hardware you buy, there's always issues. Blaming Linux overall because you had what I would definitely say is an uncommon issue that may even be due to your particular hardware seems... uncharitable.