I paid for a family subscription a couple of years ago. It is very reasonably priced. Probably one of the least regretted subscriptions I have given the amount of use I get out of it
I’m in a similar boat. I jumped to pop!os from Ubuntu for the nvidia gpu support (and snapectomy) which has worked pretty well. I think I’ll be upgrading to an AMD gpu next though so will likely go Debian after that too. My other non-gaming machines are on bookworm
Although it looks like BGA, it actually uses a QFN package where all the contacts are accessible at the edge. With a little practice they are relatively easy to hand solder (I've done many, not just rp2040)