Microsoft has always been good at catering to businesses and hooking them on windows+office+etc.
But there has always been better alternatives around, OS/2 was so much better than windows 3.x, and WordPerfect was better than word. I'm sure there are countless other examples.
Plot twist Windows has always been bad.
I found the box art for Mushroom Plumber 64
In the unlikely event that I buy a Tesla I'll make sure to unplug the GSM modem and wipe the OS and install some open source Tesla OS (If that even exists?).
The new Japanese Lacquer Box satellite.
They want the best con artists.
40 years in the field you say, and how old are you?
Yeah it still seemed slow today.
Doh I meant LXC 🤦 instead of KVM.
I thought Xen and OpenVZ etc. became obsolete with KVM? But it's probably for the best that Xen is still used.
Stillgar: Lisan Al Gaib!
It's voices all the way down!
At least you tried! And annoying that you stumbled upon hw issues.
If you ever want to try again what about getting hold of an old drive, or try dual boot, then you can swap back to windows easily and there's less pressure for Linux to work out of the box.
As you say the guides you used didn't match, try and research more about what is the correct distro for you, and maybe start with one that looks like a sure bet.