That literally is it, I tested it repeatedly because it wasn't a hobby OS, I needed it to work. It was one of the Mint 20 distros. The installation could be completely clean, five minutes old, sat idle the whole time. Thumb drive in, thumb drive out, restart, and it's locked up.
What are you doing at the time? Saying "when a USB gets unplugged, my installation is ruined" is not enough information to go off of.
That literally is it, I tested it repeatedly because it wasn't a hobby OS, I needed it to work. It was one of the Mint 20 distros. The installation could be completely clean, five minutes old, sat idle the whole time. Thumb drive in, thumb drive out, restart, and it's locked up.