I’ve been on and off with Linux for about 15 years and just want to counter some of the people trying to troubleshoot or criticize to say: it can be really tough.

We need our computers to work and we expect things to function correctly.

I’ve used dozens of distros over the years. I was a super early Arch adopter, mained Gentoo for about three years, ran my own BSD server for programming projects, and still maintain several small home Linux servers. And even I sometimes want to pull my hair out trying to get semi-new hardware working right in my distro of choice. I spent three hours today fighting Nvidia and sound drivers and eventually just had to give up on that machine after being told that what I want just flat out isn’t supported in Linux on the hardware I have.

Take a breath, set it aside until you’re ready to take another crack at it, and know that it’s a journey. You’ll get there or the software will catch up and meet you halfway. No shame in being frustrated :)

Unfortunately options are becoming increasingly limited. My guess is that they’re making more money cramming in ads for people that tolerate it than they are losing money from people who refuse it.

Thanks for this clarification. Certainly something to be aware of and pay attention to, but a little less instantly alarming than the OP title.

I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.

Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.