that OS turned me off unless it has substantially improved since then
That was my experience with Pop!_OS too. I tried switching to it after finding that Ubuntu has a lot of bloat.
In the end, I went back to Ubuntu, because it works right out of the box - even with my Nvidia graphics card! (only from 20.04 onwards; 18.04 and older versions were problematic)
When I reinstalled Ubuntu, I chose the custom / minimal installation option, and that cut out most of the bloat.
You can introduce interoperability. I am on X. I can't go to Bluesky. Let's say that Elon Musk decides to block me because I said something he didn't like. He has blocked me before for a couple of weeks. Now, I have more than a million followers on X. I cannot leave without losing them. If I go to Bluesky, I have 10 followers. Interoperability would mean that if I go to another platform, to Bluesky, when I post something on Bluesky, then my 1 million followers on X can hear it.