MC only here too. On Amiga Directory Opus (DOpus) was amazing. Their windows port came late and isn't so essential, though I can't imagine how people have the patience to do any file management with awful normal explorer. Luckily not a worry of mine, I live in the nix/nux terminals.
1997, also the year when I got 10Mbit connection at home, which was unheard of at that time. Also, came from Amiga, skipped the msdos and windows almost completely.
Do the settings once. Keep a copy of ~/ and /etc handy. Apply all settings in one go at will. Stop fiddling around, making a fuss about nothing and just keep on using it.
and irc folks have splintered now to irc4ever hardcore, matrix preachers, mastodon tooters, other small social media jesuses and so on. oh, and discord lunatics. Can't wait for that walled garden to crash.
Good thing is that there are choices.
Bad thing about the good thing is that there are too many and we're stretching thin.
If your life gets negatively affected by whatsapp being unavailable, order a new life instead.
At least install Signal, Telegram et al and wean everyone else out of fb-wa.