I’m not shifting any goal posts. I’m just tired of these posts from people saying that Linux is unstable, has quirks, etc but when you dig into it, all of the “quirks” are actually the result of strange decisions made by the author.
It’s fine to be new to Linux, but please refrain from the sweeping generalizations until you are more familiar with how it works.
Honestly, just switching to a kernel that isn't older than your hardware have a decent chance of fixing your issues. It is typically fine to upgrade kernels unless the distro has made some special modifications to them, and it was a very long time since I was hit by something like that.
If you are installing via an outside method, again, you are going agasint the grain for no good reason and making problems for yourself.
Nobody is suggesting installing LTS on brand new hardware.