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And this is treated as a bad thing?!
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Send only info about your device, its settings and capabilities, and whether it is performing properly.
In other words, even after turning off all the settings, your data still gets collected.
The rest of the installation process wasn't fun either. It was worded in this weird, condescending tone, like "Let's get everything set up for you", and "Let Cortana help you get things done!".
Thank goodness for FLOSS and GNU/Linux.
I am in a very similar situation with audio production. I have a lot of plugins and tried to see what I could get working with yabridge on my Linux laptop in my free time. Some stuff worked flawlessly, while a lot of other important plugins did not work at all. I hope that some day more stuff works and the tool gets more streamlined for less technical users, but for now it is not quite where it needs to be for my use case. In the mean time I switched to a DAW that has a Linux version (Bitwig) and I am slowly working towards switching to only using plugins that have a Linux version. I am far from a point where I can comfortably switch though, so for now Windows is an occupational hazard.