If Q were non-linear, then the Big Bang would not make such a great hiding spot from the other Q. He can travel through time, but he is not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. He stands no chance against non-linear beings. The Prophets could stop the Q from ever existing in the first place.
Never forget Voyager, where Torres could invent a brand new method of transporter lock and implement it on-the-fly all through a console on the bridge, but even the bio-neural gel packs weren't smart enough to get a power requisition down to the bottom decks without someone putting it into a padd and physically walking it down there.
Clearly if the architects had seen anysci-fiever they would have come up with the idea to shunt that excess energy into ad-hoc shields for poor Ensign Redshirt.
Okay, I didn't expect all of the examples to be from Stargate. But they certainly like that trope.
Tool time!