Oh wow, how did it do the latter!? (I’m more technical than the average person, but half the time I feel too dumb for programming.dev, but I’ll never smarten up if I don’t stick around and learn, so…)
Also shifted off Windows 11 to Fedora. Well, at least, a modified version anyways—Nobara—on the suggestion of a user in the thread.
For any onlookers reading this, I used https://rufus.ie/en/ and I did not get my USB stick bricked.