There are other tools for that, but I confess that I've gotten used to defaulting to the address bar for random queries like that - the browser is always open.
This obviously doesn’t solve every problem with Google, and it cuts in some ways. Obviously, if you are searching for, say, when a restaurant is open, you are going to want to use the knowledge panels. The goal of this is to make up for those situations where you need a simplified view, but Google has intentionally made it hard to reach that view.
If you change your default search to udm=14, you lose that. Sure, you can click around on the now-useless results page to get back to standard Google and get the answer, but that's friction that wasn't there before. The parameter doesn't just kill the AI stuff.
Going back to the “All” page is a single click on a button that never moves. The “Web” mode is two clicks, minimum, each time, and the link is often never in the same place, making it difficult to get muscle memory. You are basically deciding between two levels of frustration, and for many users, the latter wins. In your case, it sounds like the former does.
I absolutely do not think in your case, you should make udm14 your home page. There may be a UX solution that could be put in place here, so the original search is still accessible from the site if you want it. But for people whose goal is to find information from websites, this is a change that may absolutely be welcomed by them.
Let’s not let it be lost here that the real problem is that Google arguably ruined its knowledge panels by treating the AI results like one.