The year is about right. I didn’t lose my DOS partition, but I was already familiar with partitioning. Someone gave me a Slackware CD set. Had a lot of difficulty getting a higher res than 640x480 with my VLB video card.
Started a BBS at the time, switched to OS/2 Warp, which worked awesome until Windows apps moved to the new Win95 requirements. Started using RHEL for a while, but eventually Debian, then Ubuntu, and now PopOS.
It’s been a long journey, but now Windows 11 is the weird OS that needs hours of troubleshooting and tweaking and adjustments. It’s just not worth the effort, so I keep an Windows 10 VM around with Office for the odd occasion when I need it.
Here’s a thought: Before installing packages you don’t understand, go to the Firefox site and follow their instructions which work fine on Ubuntu and doesn’t install snap.
I’m not a fan of snap either, but with all software, people need to RTFM. Not do the dumb thing and then cry on the Internet seeking hive mind rage when the dumb thing happens.