Which - in my considered opinion - makes them so much worse.
Is it because writing native UI on all current systems I'm aware of is still worse than in the times of NeXTStep with Interface Builder, Objective C, and their class libraries?
And/or is it because it allows (perceived) lower-cost "web developers" to be tasked with "native" client UI?
Might be OT since I never was much of a distro hopper.
Got introduced to Linux with SLS, used RedHat until it became too commercial for my taste. At that time, found gentoo and stuck with it hard. It allows me to have completely custom packages fully integrated with the system package manager, that's the top killer feature for me.
For your kind of use case and issues, I'd recommend finding someone local with a good amount of Linux experience and do a couple of pair sessions. I find this transports a lot more (especially 'soft') knowledge on concepts and how to do things efficiently. Also, it helps to share frustrations ;-)
Linux does not try to be another Windows. While it's fairly possible to treat it kinda as such especially in newer times, it won't feel efficient or convenient that way, in my experience.
In my opinion (see also Dr Gabor Maté), addictions (which, I also think, can be about petty much anything) are very much mostly attempts to escape pain, when better alternatives do not seem available to a person.
So, yeah, video game addiction can be a thing, and certain game designs exacerbate that (similar to what might fuel gambling addictions and such).
But all of this perspective only distracts from whatever is causing the people/kids pain, makes them seek out games in an addicted fashion in the first place.
I'm gonna be interested how that's supposed to work with false positives, err, collateral damage, err, plausibly deniable canceling of free speech of citizens. Nice try.
I recently came across ReaR and very much like it so far for my "fire and forget" whole system backups (working data I back up differently, typically something rsync-y).
From one perspective, it should work; from another I never thought about how SATA/IDE adapters exactly work in this regard. Would any old one work, or most, or (almost) none at all?
Just to add this idea, I've used internal floppy drives with USB connection in the past, to attach in systems that don't have an old style floppy connector.
P.S.: Love the idea! I'm also a great fan of haptic/physical interfaces.
A Kodi client that allows seeking would be great.