I totally agree.
Right now I'm on a new project with a teammate who likes to rebase PR branches, and merge with merge commits to "record a clean history of development". It's not quite compatible with the atomic-change philosophy of conventional commits. I'm thinking about making a case to change style, but I've already failed to argue the problem of disruption when rebasing PR branches.
I believe your last Linux experience in 2015 predates DXVK which has been transformative for Linux gaming. Wine used to have to implement its own DirectX replacement which necessarily lagged behind Microsoft's implementation, and IIUC didn't get the same level of hardware acceleration due to missing out on DirectX acceleration built into graphics cards.
Now DXVK acts as a compatibility bridge between DirectX and Vulkan. Vulkan is cross-platform, does generally the same stuff that DirectX does, and graphics cards have hardware acceleration for Vulkan calls the same way they do for DirectX calls. So game performance on Linux typically meets or exceeds performance on Windows, and you can play games using the latest DirectX version without waiting for some poor dev to reimplement it.
If you are using Steam with Proton, Lutris, or really any Wine gaming these days you are using DXVK. It's easy to take for granted. But I remember the night-and-day difference it made.
Yeah, I've had similar anxiety recently choosing a new place for my family to live. I think keep in mind that if both choices seem like good options you're likely to get some good outcomes either way. My wife put it like this,