The thing you describe with NetworkManager is worse on Windows. I am uncertain how many different user interfaces there are for networking in Windows, and many simple actions take at least 3 screens, and still doesn't fix the problem.

Every time my connected monitor wakes up from sleep it steals audio back from my internal laptop speakers, the only way to fix it is (with the help of a chatbot to write a script) to permanently turn off the monitor speakers.

All of the rough edges with Linux that are legitimately worse are not things that are the fault of Linux. Tools and games and video streaming services which are either not tested or deliberately designed so they cannot function on Linux.