I grabbed it from the little app approved store front thing or whatever that Zorin had. I tried a couple different methods and it would install fine but every time it launched, it would hard freeze the system. No other app or anything installed had a problem.

Your assumptions are probably accurate. As an OS, I don't want tracking, AI, fingerprinting, using my data, age verification blah blah blah. As a company, I don't like much of what they stand for, also enabling and promoting many of the things I mentioned above to become industry standard.

Linux CAN be that for me, and it feels like I can make the swap at some point, but every time I try, and with multiple distros, I run into something that just drives me back.