Go to Desktop Mode, run Plasma Discover, get the Heroic flatpak, run Heroic, log into GoG there, install games.
Heroic is pretty damn good at doing the rest. It'll install the Linux or Windows version of your games, it'll add them to Steam, it'll run them. Heroic will even give Steam some coverart for your games. (Many are missing the logo, tho. DeckyLoader +SteamGridDB plugin fixes that.)
Flatseal is the tool.
(Another benefit to using the flatpak version of Steam is that Steam leaks rather substantial chunks of /dev/shm memory. The flatpak automatically cleans that up. God knows why Valve hasn't fixed this yet.)
The simplest way to opt out is to "install any other OS instead".
Hahahaha NO
The hard part is finding a stable identifier, instead of "this interface is know as sink 48 at this exact instant. It will be a completely different number tomorrow. It might even be a potato emoji, who knows?"
Might as well go for Win11, you're going to have to deal with it next year anyways.
Windows doesn't do minimal, it does whatever the hell it wants. There are some OOBE tricks to get a local account working.
I have used the privacy.sexy app to strip down some of the most obnoxious Win11 bits - be warned that you have to disable defender to have it work. Is it doing bad things? Is MS doing incredibly shady shit with their detections? Who's to say? When I turn on Defender afterwards, everything seems "fine".
There's no need to get rid of grub, or play games with different boot drives. Get to know how EFI works. Look at efibootmgr's output - that's pretty much all that the firmware knows. The firmware has multiple entries consisting of a drive (magic device number), a program path (EFI\grub\grub_x64.efi), and maybe a string to pass along. There is a priority list (0003,0001,0002) which MS occasionally likes to re-arrange.
Power management on "the most boring Intel chip imaginable" is still touch-and-go at times.
"Except when something breaks after an odd update once or twice per year"
You don't need snapshots, except for the moments when you do. The point of snapshots is that they're so cheap that you can let them roll on their own and only care about them the day your system breaks.
It's not like they're stuck on some outdated proprietary engine like RPG Maker. Minetest is under active development, with a small list of dependencies that are also under active development. It is under no particular rush to get off of X11/Xwayland.
Do you have pci-e slots? An nvme to pcie card is cheap - it's pretty much just passing from one connector shape to another.
I wouldn't mind if they replaced TRRS with a better connector. I get that the jack is a large part and it's difficult to seal against water ingress. The wiper contacts on it are also unreliable, and the plug doesn't release well when your cord snags.
Multiplexing headphones with my one and only charging port is absolutely the worst possible answer.
(Did i forget to mention that I want it to be an open connector? One that any vendor can make without Apple's permission?)