I owe much of my career to trying to set up Linux From Scratch two decades ago. While it's a much better experience installing Linux nowadays, there's a lot to be said for the experience spending your weekend debugging a system will give you.
Had a similar experience with Mint (of all distros) on an old laptop where it would not detect the headphones I plugged in. Spent like 30 minutes troubleshooting the settings/configuration and googling. Turns out the cable was weird and I just needed to not push it in too deep for it to be detected.
Been there with those old printer cables that had the two thumb screws.
I spent way too long troubleshooting print problems turned out with some cables if you dont screw the thumb screws all the way in you don't get a good cable connection.
Once helped a nice old lady troubleshooter her computer. Everything was yellow. Checked monitor settings three times. Checked Windows for f.lux. Checked Windows video settings. Reverted drivers. Updated drivers.