Never used systemd-homed, but i know an alternative to full disk encryption is having the root partition unencrypted, and the home partition unlocked at boot. For a single user machine at least, i don’t see any difference when using it than unlocking at login. But then having 2 partitions is mandatory, and that may be a problem when running out of space.

I hate windows too but this is something normal that also happens on Linux. Take a drive from another system and you won’t be able to edit its protected files without root access.