If the change is expected, how can it be a shock? Excellent journalism as always from The Race.

Okay the extension I have is called “Sound Input & Output Device Chooser.” I think that if you install this and the Other extension above your problem will be solved.

I use Pop and have a Gnome extension that helps with this. I’m not at home now and I can’t remember the name but I can report back later.

Doing a quick search on this gave me “Application Volume Mixer” but I don’t think this is the exact extension I have.

Mint is great and feels very similar to Windows, and Pop OS is also very great and feels a bit more analogous to Mac OS if you prefer that.

Pop is in the middle of building their own desktop environment (moving away from Gnome) so the latest version is 22.04, but they're still keeping kernel updates and packages up to date until the new DE is ready to launch.

When I first wanted to switch to Linux I tried out both on a USB stick and I was impressed with both, but I preferred the style of Pop. Both are based on Ubuntu so if you need to Google for tech support 99% of what you find will apply to you.