Yes, DELL was the most important keyword in this thread. It's why it fails with Debian. Debian does not seem to have decent NMVe controller drivers FOR THAT DELL motherboard. I'm not saying Debian (or Ubuntu or Mint or PopOS or any other Debian distribution) sucks. I currently use Ubuntu on 2 other computers and also on a mission critical file server and it works fine, plus the community help is tremendous, so it's all good and I'm not giving up on Ubuntu either.
But as you saw here, Debian lacks hardware drivers that Arch really nailed down. I forgot to mention earlier in this thread, but I've already had a VERY OLD AMD motherboard on which Ubuntu 18.0 would freeze while booting from the USB stick HALF THE TIME (not always!) and so I've used Arch instead and that too solved the issue back 4 years ago (it was not Manjaro back then, I forgot the distribution name, but it was Arch based and also with XFCE4 desktop environment just like Manjaro).
I'm on the Ubuntu team, but I'm actually more active with the Lubuntu team.
If you ever get bored and want to try it again while taking notes, a bug report may help.
IMO, Ubuntu and Lubuntu will suffer the same disastrous DELL NVMe controller failures, since they're both Debian based, just like Mint does exactly the same as Ubuntu (I tried both and they both fail exactly the same, plus the installer is exactly identical too, giving a hint it's both Debian with a different skin).
I don't mind trying it again for science. Believe or not, I've got multiple copies of that stupid DELL laptop with the NVMe M.2 drive in it, so I can just take one out of a box and try again if you want me to. I'll be honest, I never bought a single DELL computer in my whole life but I obtained a couple of those identical DELL laptops for free. Guess nobody wants them.
I guess Debian and/or Ubuntu developers never cared to make properly working drivers for that controller, because I would imagine 99% of DELL owners will not even bother to install Linux on it, since DELL computers all come with W10 pre-installed and pre-activated, plus DELL customers are not your typical advanced users either, so to me, it's not surprising Debian does not focus on making those work.