Your phone is encrypted by default, there’s practically no way to not let it encrypt without unlocking the bootloader.

Older phones that came out before the default encryption was standard were the ones that had the option to encrypt the phone or let it remain decrypted.

If you own a smartwatch that supports tap to pay, you can use that instead.

Not Macbooks though surprisingly.

Yes only the US should get access to that

Wrong, I’m running a sandy bridge on cachyos right now

• Driver availability; Linux is getting better, but Windows is superior

Doesn’t Linux have pretty much every driver built into the kernel with the only notable exception being the NVIDIA closed source drivers. Even those drivers are a single command away from installation, it even configures itself correctly out of the box for Wayland support.

KDE Connect, when set up properly(pretty much does it automatically) alongside a linux system, you can access the entirety of your phone’s internal storage over LAN as if it were a network drive mounted on your PC.