Installed OBS from flathub and it offers auto-configuration on startup, so, ok, let's do that. It fails "unable to start up encoder" with nothing actionable. I found a few unanswered forum posts from years ago, so without a solution, I just kept dismissing errors until they went away.

Next, I wanted to try recording a screencast. Ya know, the thing everyone does with OBS to stream games and stuff... except, there's no screen capture source. lol. I'll find another way, but not with OBS!

(this is not a request for help; please understand that even attempting to fix either of the above issues will simply unlock new and more horrifying failures; computers are not good)