> Why can't I plug a Windows laptop into a docking station, and expect the screens to come up in the same order they were in last time? Why is it so hard?

I've never seen this work correctly. My work dock breaks monitor ordering on MacOS reliably and Gnome+Wayland frequently. I don't remember if it broke for Xorg. My home monitor setup breaks mouse behavior in borderless fullscreen and libreoffice scaling on KDE+Wayland.