What sort of hardware are you running? I’ve been converting some old computers at work in our “Business Centers” to Linux with Plasma and have not experienced anything like you’re describing. They range from pentium dual cores from like 2011 up to 6th gen i5s, and all of them have been working great.

Windows 11 actually released 3.5 years ago!

Do you have any client recommendations? I’ve tried Kavita and I liked the web app, but having a dedicated 2-way syncing client would be nice!

Windows updates don’t work correctly a lot of the time if you’ve bypassed the requirements. My predecessor at work installed 11 on some ancient systems and it’s been a hassle.

I am so lucky to live near a Microcenter.

I have my own domain and pay for Zoho to host my email. It works well aside from the occasional site that refuses to accept my email as valid because it’s not a .com/org domain.