I started using Linux desktops at work around 5 or 6 years ago, and even since then, the experience has improved greatly.
I've been on various distros with KDE over the past couple of years, but from what I've seen in passing, Gnome "just works" really well with most distros that use it. KDE requires some tweaking occasionally, but since 5.27, it's been rock solid for me, and the KDE team seems really dedicated to making Plasma 6 stable and easy to use.
You might want to fire up a VM or throw Ubuntu on an old laptop and see how it feels. It really has gotten a lot better for the average user, and something like Mint, imo, is really easy to pick up and just use.
Personally, I really like customization, and I work as a DevOps engineer (formerly linux sysadmin), so I don't mind getting really deep into the OS if necessary. But I don't think you have to if you want to have a good experience.
I also got my Tesla before Elon went full crazy, and there only recently were a lot of options. Even then, most were waitlisfed for months and months. Tesla manufactures a ridiculously high percentage of the EV market. Most large car companies are still just dipping their toes in EVs.
You can't trust corporations to not ruin a product eventually. The reason federation and FOSS is so important is that it strips the power dynamics that typically corrupt online spaces. Is it perfect? No. But reddit didn't become shitty because of individuals making bad choices, it became shitty because it had to.
I use Vivaldi, which isn't perfect, but I need tab grouping in some form. Firefox's solutions for tab groups are meh at best