We have somewhat similar in Canada, not as dreadful as USA, but still what you would say anti-knowledge.

I saw this in gradeschool, kids actually trying to learn and better themselves were bullies and labeled brown-noser losers.

At University the Uni newspaper editors would dumb down articles purposely, since they thought the general reader may not understand the topic fully ( which defeats the purpose of knowledge articles ).

And random times. Some guy talking about making his tent lines taut, and the rest laughing saying you mean tight. And him saying , no tension on a rope or cable is taut, tight is for fastening bolts, etc. Then everyone being "yeah whatever idiot"

And overseas teenage relatives visiting , knowing 4-5 languages, and saying "Sorry, my English is not the best" and me trying to explain it is way better than half of the coworkers I have who only speak English. And then trying to explain to a teenager that these full grown adults have no desire to learn correct terms, grammar, spelling or punctuation.

Trying to read my wife's family's facebook posts is like a course in stroke cryptography.

Dedicated noise reduction software like Topaz and DxO rely on the GPU. And because of that, they don't work on Wine or VMs (unless you have a dedicated GPU and can get GPU passthrough functioning).

I use darktable and digikam for every other step of my workflow, but that one step, I just can't do with Linux

I take pride in capturing the image, not relying on software to recreate it the way I wish it had been shot

Unless you're shooting flat JPGs with no photo modes enabled, and not doing any post processing, then you're not getting that result. And even if you do that, two cameras shooting the same scene will produce different images, because the process of converting RAW sensor data to the reduced colour palette and bit depth of a JPG image, involves an algorithm deciding how best to recreate (not capture) what you saw with your eye, and no two cameras do it the same way, and neither produce a "true" capture of what you saw.

Ultimately, it's a meaningless distinction. My camera does in body image compositing, using firmware to stack multiple frames in to a single exposure, giving you light trails, without overexposed static light sources. It uses AI subject recognition to drive its auto focus. It has a 120frame buffer than records records directly to the buffer whilst holding the shutter button half down, and then writes them all to the card when you press, effectively letting you capture moments that you would normally have missed, because human reflexes are imperfect. And the RAW software that comes with the camera literally uses AI noise reduction.

So for me to draw the line and say that AI driven noise reduction (non generative AI at that) is a problem would be a bit hypocritical of me.

As it is, the camera hardware itself does solid noise reduction on the JPGs it produces (using algorithms built in to the firmware) giving really nice results even at high ISOs. But the only way to replicate that with a RAW file, is using the camera supplied RAW software (which doesn't work on linux), or by using a 3rd partyAI noise reduction app (which don't work on linux). If I don't use them, then I'm in the strange situation where my high ISO JPG preview photos look better than an end to end post processed RAW file.

If I was "embracing the flaws that my camera creates" I would be shooting in JPEG mode, using images mostly straight out of the camera, and they would be less noisy than what I can achieve with current linux tools.

I've been doing this for 20 years, and using m43 (or four thirds before it) for most of that time. I know what I want from my photography, and I know the tools that give it to me. What I want is for the image to look like the scene that I saw. I don't care if it's a pixel perfect match for it. I don't care about embracing the flaws that a camera introduces, flaws that don't exist when viewed through the human eye (reduced dynamic range, sensor noise etc), out of some sense of "purity". Purity that was lost the moment I pressed the shutter on a digital camera that has to encode the image in software to make it visible.

Vanilla Arch is the better one in terms of performance and ease of use (yeah call me weird for saying Arch is easier to use than other distros XD)

Not weird at all, I use Arch on my main system exactly because I'm lazy and it's easier to use. It's harder to install, but a lot easier to use.