That's about what I would have done. Try to switch to a console first like you did, but if that doesn't work, force reboot and pray.
The worst that could happen is that you might have some data loss or mess up the OS (which has happened to me before). That's why you should always have an up-to-date backup! It'll save you one of these days.
Either way, try switching to a different proton version, or do some other fixes and test it out until it stops crashing. This honestly sounds like a freak (but common) problem. I wouldn't worry about data loss or corruption that much if there's no other signs of it (e.g., SMART reporting a dying drive), but a backup is generally helpful for any scenario.
Fedora will always be my go-to, and the KDE spin should be pretty familiar layout wise for former windows users.
Since you have an nvidia gpu, Pop OS will probably be your best bet if you need it working immediately.
I wouldn't recommend Ubuntu anymore, as it's been pushing snaps (package manager) MS-style, and it's gotten some shit from the community for various reasons over the years.
Linux Mint is also good, too. It's very easy to just get up and going, perfect for people who aren't familiar with Linux, too.
To be fair, I don't think systemd is classified as just an init system anymore. It's a software suite that just "conveniently" happened to have an init system included.
I distrohopped so many times I can't even remember everything I used.
Now I'm just on Fedora for my desktops, and Rocky on my server. Everything (mostly) works, so I'm fine with it.
Sadly, no. If he could run an unlimited amount, then we might have another king like it's 1776 all over again!
He was a pretty good president, but it's probably for the best that there's a 2 term limit.
I haven't noticed any outages recently. I'm pretty sure the situation has gotten better at this point.
I think you can enable history and it'll work then, but I don't do that so I can't say exactly.
I'm not that old! I'm still a linux user and tech enthusiast though, so you're not that off.
It still works for me (Infinity), and there are some small subreddits that I occasionally visit. I'm holding out until the bitter end, but I am using lemmy waay more now.
Not really, CentOS Stream tracks ahead of RHEL and isn't bug for bug compatible, which is also something that Rocky and Alma wants and needs to be.
I'll stick around in both reddit and lemmy until enough communities move over here or reddit just dies.