Xaggerated reality maybe

But wouldn’t it be better if they chose to obfuscate it. Are there any inherent disadvantage in doing so?

ZorinOS used to send anonymous pings and the user did not had the option to opt out. https://zorin.com/legal/privacy/before-31-may-2018/ Seems now its an opt in service.

There were talks on making people opt out automatically if they don’t give consent for continuing the messages.

Tried it when I was starting out. But I may have read somewhere that it uses telemetry. So uninstalled later.

I believe I was on PopOS then. Now I am on EndeavorOS.

I was having problems with NTFS HDDs when I was dual booting. Needing to get into windows for solving them. Then I ditched Windows, reformatted my drives to EXT4 and never looked back.

But now I am using EXT4 with LUKS for encryption.

NTFS reads/writes fine on Linux. But if anything goes wrong then you might need a utility to fix it (Mostly caused by sudden unplugging). If you have the option, I would suggest you format and the media drive in EXT4. Mind you, EXT4 can only be read by Linux systems.