I do find, like you have, that the GUI implementations one finds with Linux tend to be weirdly deficient in very specific ways. For instance, I'm running the latest release, not LTS, of Ubuntu right now, and at this point in time, I still cannot:

-Set a different wallpaper for each monitor
-Make the OS remember where I closed a window and reopen it there

On the second one, it's possible for that to happen, but it's the app's responsibility for some reason. So Firefox does behave that way, as long as I haven't messed with my monitor layout and as long as I quit the app rather than closing the windows one after the other. Nicely nicely, Mozilla.

But my VNC app that I use for half an hour every morning? Every morning I have to move it over to the other monitor immediately after launching. There are other apps that I could try, but I haven't mustered the patience to re-solve my VNC problem when I have a lot of other things to think about as well.

It is even more aggravating that, according to the googling I have done about this, this is because of the adoption of the supposedly-better Wayland server; if I were to run X instead, apparently my window position remembering would come back. This was a solved problem, and that's apparently why it's de-solved. I have not investigated why Wayland is there, but I assume that it's for the same reasons that Systemd is there, ancient processes that have become detestable to modern programmers and needed something to replace them.

Your USB stick and network mapping issues as well, I have had many aggravated days with that stuff. I especially find that once I format a USB to linux, it requires extraordinary measures to even see it again in windows (one has to load diskpart and clean it first, which is a command line process - big deal to a Windows user). I don't know if there's anyone who could be blamed for this aspect, really, interplatform operability will always be a problem while the profit motive is a factor, and UEFI/Secure Boot makes that a minefield. It's a complex world.

Take this as you will, but I don't find I have many problems with mapped drives anymore, as long as I do it the old-fashioned way with /etc/fstab. Very occasionally I might need to run sudo mount -a in a console but that's when something else has gone wrong, network-wise. Once again, the GUI implementations are indeed troublesome, but there at least is a working solution in this case, but one which involves the console, probably.

It's aggravating, to be sure, but it's also free forever, and I have many choices I could try instead of Ubuntu/Gnome, and at some point I will (I have a lot of personal inertia on this, as many do - I've had KDE installed for weeks, haven't touched it in a good ten years now, but I also haven't had to reboot for weeks so I haven't had occasion to bother logging out). I didn't have to pay for it, I'll never have to pay for it, and at some point either someone will sort these minor irritations out, or I might even take a weekend to learn more about how these desktop environments work, and come up with a solution of my own to share and earn the love and respect of my peers.

It's a world of possibility, rather than endless rent-paying, and that is more valuable to some than this or that minor convenience.