Just a few thoughts.

Hmm, Thunderbolt is already on the decline due to compatibility reasons and is almost entirely uninteresting. There have been reports in this forum from RME that Thunderbolt 3 and 4, if I recall correctly, are not fully compatible with previous Thunderbolt versions.

If anything, I currently only see a need for USB2 and USB3 drivers, as well as PCIe. The rest is "yesterday's news."

And BY THE WAY … If I see it correctly, an open-source driver is not required.
The intellectual property of RME could be fully protected by releasing binary drivers, like Nvidia does to put an example.

As much as I understand manufacturers having problems with Linux support, I would slowly wish for that to have an exit option from commercial operating systems.

Apple systems are unaffordable, not modular enough, and Apple itself interferes too much.

Microsoft meddles too much with the GUI and then the Win11 performance disaster, excluding CPUs that were still fine for Win10 (because of the badly designed and therefore massively performance sucking kern isolation and virtualization or how this was called). Moreover, the push towards and dependence on the cloud and subscription models (perhaps soon for the operating system as well) is too strong for me. It seems like, at some point, you either pay for your cloud service, or you can't log in to your computer, at least not use the software. Not to mention the increasing data theft, soon to be intensified by the integration of AI because not everything can be processed locally just for performance reasons, and Microsoft surely appreciates having more data about you.

I really don't want to switch to Linux, but manufacturers are leaving me with almost no choice, or I'll have to take a step back into the analog world if this continues.

Well, I would favor that, but then better start with the essential drivers and applications. Stuff that is future-proof and needed. Sorry, but Thunderbolt really doesn't have that significance anymore.

Further thoughts on this topic: I have the impression that if things continue like this, there will and must be a certain pull towards Linux or you will have certain "disadvantages".

At some point, you will no longer be sure of your personal data (the situation we have already) and I think by AI it is getting worse). Or you need to pay (more) for the software and services (maybe even the OS) by these subscription models. You do not own anything anymore, you only pay for the service, once the subscription is ceased (or they throw you out of their cloud) then all is gone. You only own an expensive computer, cheers ...

Then, of course, the manufacturers who can already offer Linux Support (or who already prepared for this) would have a big selling point.