Too real. I booted up windows last week because I wanted to test something quickly before going to bed... starting it and testing my thing took about 5 mins; but then shutting down took more than half an hour.
If you wanna flash Android phone, or resurrect usb flash, then you'll NEED windows, I've been daily driving Linux for 8 years myself, but sadly, some specific software don't work under wine and if you run it in virtual machine then you'll never know what'll happen, may as well brick device you're flashing
ADB and Fastboot both run natively on Linux. I don't think I've needed other tools since the HP Touchpad days. And that didn't come with Android in the first place.
That does not sound like trash to me. I can see how those issues with Google connections are problematic for some users, but as the article acknowledges, lineage is primarily targeting people who want to update their old devices. Sounds like degoogling is best done with a different rom is all.