At this point I just let Android copy whatever, as long as it contains what I want, and then I use the clipboard edit tool that pops up to delete everything I don't want. Extra steps, but way less fiddly.
Another alternative could be Distrobox. Added benefit of the apps being sandboxed, and easily removed in case of issues. Downside is that you are eating up some space with some extra OS images.
Steam Deck runs Steam OS, which is a heavily customized version of Arch Linux by Valve. But unlike normal Arch installs, Valve has locked the System partition(/) to read-only.
The reasons they've done this is two fold. First, there's actually two copies of the system partition. The reason for this is that when an update is downloaded it's actually written to the other partition, not the one you're currently using. This way the update happens in the background, and then you just need to reboot for it to switch partitions and do some house cleaning. What this means though, is that any changes you might've normally made to the system partition, disappear, as they are now on the other partition you aren't using. So if any changes you make won't matter, not much point in letting people make them in the first place. Using Flatpaks, any applications users install would instead be stored in the user partition, and never touch the OS itself.
The second major reason for doing this, is consistency. If people are discouraged or blocked from modifying the system partition, then any bugs or issues that crop up are, 99% of the time, Valve's fault. And because of that, Valve can more easily diagnose and try to reproduce any reported issues, because theoretically, the user's Steam Deck should be configured exactly the same as one at Valve HQ. All that's needed is for a user to report what they were doing when they encountered the issue, and Valve can follow those same steps and hopefully encounter the same issue, get detailed logs, and hopefully quickly push out a patch as needed.
And that's one version of Immutability. Valve doesn't go the full nine-yards here, just enough for their use case. In other Immutable Distros, versioning is taken even further, where you can control multiple versions and reset the OS state on the fly as needed, keeping any changes to a minimum and in controlled sand boxes. There's a ton of use cases for these, but the most obvious benefits are for enterprise and mass-market solutions, where a single configuration is multiplied across a large amount of servers, or end-user devices, allowing for easier diagnoses of issues and pushing of patches. For end-user clients especially, if they aren't expected to be customizing the OS to begin with, it makes support much easier for IT.
For your average Linux user, the benefits aren't as large, as you'll often want to be able to tweak things to your liking. But your Average Joe that just wants a computer that can surf the web and install some apps that can be found as Flatpaks, an immutable OS that they can't easily screw up is a plus.
If you're using UEFI in VB, definitely update to the latest version. UEFI support in older VB was pretty bad. Works a lot better now, though I haven't had time to test this new version of Vanilla OS, so YMMV.
Yeah, when they announced this thing I saw this coming a mile away. Sucks for all the people that they scammed with it though. Unless you're somewhat paranoid like me you probably would've thought it was neat, especially if you had an older car without an infotainment system.
Roblox is a sandbox game sort of like Minecraft, but with way more power given to third-party developers and users to develop and distribute content in it. What you'd consider mods for other games are the whole point of Roblox, and MTX can be implemented by those third-party developers using "Robux" as a currency. The MTX can be your usual MTX fare of skins and power-ups, but also often abused for less ethical purposes, like gambling mechanics. The fact that Robux can be cashed out for real money via official and unofficial methods mean that's it's ripe for abuse.
Update: Also, I wasn't aware of this before the article, but apparently gambling sites have figured out a method to link a Roblox account to their external sites, and then use the user's Robux wallet as currency in their illegal online casinos.
Also, if you're dual booting, Disable Fast Start in Windows! That'll prevent drives from being mounted on Linux since Windows never technically "shutsdown" when Fast Boot is enabled.
Jellyfin/Plex/Emby turn your media collection into your own personal Netflix. They have apps for multiple platforms, you can setup user access controls, parental controls based off age ratings, track progress through shows and movies, search and organize based off genre and tags, and much more. Also, they can handle on the fly transcoding of the media, so if a device doesn't support a specific codec or container it can be converted into another, or if the user is on a poor Internet connection which can't handle a 4K video, it can downgrade the quality to make it easier to stream on the poor connection.
Overall, they just provide a better experience when consuming media.
The new Beats stuff actually gets reviewed pretty well now. Not that it qualifies as a hifi experience for the price, but it's at least not a complete ripoff anymore.