By not doing proper research. And "everyone" is a stretch. Had I been involves in suggesting a distro I would have asked what hardware they had.

That's what atomic distros are for. Detecting problems at the development level, not the user level. Might give one of them a try. And get rid of the dual boot, that's just pain in the ass

Why does secure boot need to stay on?

Even so, you should be able to sign the drivers and use the boot shim if you really want to go through that process.

Thanks for the response

Kid, if you want proof, DM me an invite to a call somewhere you can screencast and I'll show you exactly what the issue is and fix it quickly. I'm that positive.

And you're missing the point: do your own research

I’m venting because I don’t understand how the experience is so vastly different for people.

It's always going to be a driver issue. It takes time and money to develop drivers for *nix, so most manufacturers don't bother. It's the most significant issue *nix has to deal with and if it wasn't an issue, no one would deal with Windows.

You can absolutely dual boot PopOS! and Windows. The only real issue you'll run into is Windows update is destructive--so you'll have to manually keep fixing systemd boot to ensure your PopOS! instance can continue to boot after Windows update.

Bluetooth - Another nightmare. Bluetooth is terrible on Linux.

Shitty dongles is shittier in Linux, that's true. Never ever had a problem with Bluetooth on laptops.

None of my controllers work with Steam, no matter how many countless hours I’ve spent troubleshooting.

They work with games outside of Steam? If true is a Steam problem, not a Linux one. "But it works with Steam on Windows", well Valve can fuck up and introduce a bug on the Linux version.