I switched over to Zoho as well recently. While there are some upsells, they are usually reasonable enough. I also occasionally use their other services like writer, notes, and calendar which is nice.
IIRC Framework can preinstall fedora for you since it's officially supported. I use Fedora on an AMD Framework 13 and its been very smooth. Even the fingerprint sensor works.
EDIT: They will not install linux for unfortunately but it is still supported
The learning aspect is the big one for me. If you need a reliable service with no time spent learning or troubleshooting, you're probably better using a paid service.
I have one of the newer AMD models and I find it has about 2-3 hours of batter life, though it spends most of it's time suspended for my use case. I use Fedora and have the "balanced" profile selected. I don't mind the poor battery life since the processor is leaps and bounds better than the 6th gen 2 core Intel I was using before.
The bullshit of chromeOS to be capable of running on the shittiest hardware but having an artificial lifetime for devices is stupid.
To google's credit, they did increase that limit to 10 years, but that was only recently.
Are you using a framework 13? While I find the battery life to be usable, if it's that much worse on Windows I'm not sure I would have gotten a framework if I used windows lol.
I've not noticed any issues using the included dongle that comes with pixel phones. What's annoying is that when the type-c connector is bumped, the dongle can lose signal and the music stops completely. My current phone has a headphone jack for this very reason.
I personally went with a yubikey because their form factor is pretty slick. I'm not to worried about damaging the key.