I paid for a family subscription a couple of years ago. It is very reasonably priced. Probably one of the least regretted subscriptions I have given the amount of use I get out of it
I’m in a similar boat. I jumped to pop!os from Ubuntu for the nvidia gpu support (and snapectomy) which has worked pretty well. I think I’ll be upgrading to an AMD gpu next though so will likely go Debian after that too. My other non-gaming machines are on bookworm
Although it looks like BGA, it actually uses a QFN package where all the contacts are accessible at the edge. With a little practice they are relatively easy to hand solder (I've done many, not just rp2040)
I live in an Edwardian street and my house should have been 13 except it isn’t. They skipped it and my house is 15 instead. Hopefully the universe doesn’t spot this deceit!
I had almost exactly the same career arc. Perl became Python, Sun became Linux and I eventually moved beyond sysadmin work into automation, then API development and now I lead software development teams. Are you still doing sysadmin work?