If you don’t want to do that, then you can buy a bootable drive (for example here: https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/mint21-usb.html)

Using a different tool to create a bootable drive is just a part of installing any operating system, not just Linux. If you ever need to install windows on a pc that doesn’t have it installed you will see the same process.

The other one did as well (https://zdf.social)

And thanks to activityPub there is interoperability between services. I only have a Mastodon account, but I can follow people on pixelfed without problem. It moves the focus back onto communicating rather than being on the platform