I totally get it. in terms of ease of use and setup, if you ever do give it another go, try fedora. I had similar gaming issues with multiple Linux distros, gave fedora a go, and everything worked pretty much right out of the box, I was super impressed. ymmv ofc but keep it in mind for the future!
it meant to be yes. unfortunately having more stuff baked in can lead to more issues than good on some systems. kde neon is meant to be kubuntu with more stuff baked in but ime it causes more issues than good.