have been using bazzite for a while now and don't have issues with Firefox, could be tests Google are running. they recently are targeting users of adblockers and artificially setting high load times in hopes users disable them. a decent alternative is freetube (on flathub) which is anonymous so you can't login but you can import playlists and includes ad+sponsor block. they're pretty fast at fixing Google's attempts to break it too, sometimes you might have to change instances to get it working.
caches are never really a concern to me they will regen after the fact, from your description i would worry more about db, this is dependent though in what you're using and what you are storing. if the concern is having the same system intact then my primary concern would be backing up any config file you have. in cases of failure you mainly want to protect against data loss, if it takes time to regenerate cache/db that's time well spent for simplicity of actively maintaining your system
fair point micromachines is finicky to play so it's good for teaching patience lol. although the mechanic will only give points if one player falls to far behind and goes off screen. when i was a kid my brothers and i would just explore the maps and played it more as we have to stay close enough to not lose. as an adult the game just becomes chase your kid, probably best to not play it seriously
in Windows you separate each drive by a letter like C:, D:, etc, however on Linux your drives are mounted as part of your folder structure. the top level is called root which would be / you can then mount each disc as a folder under root, so for example /home could be a separate hard drive but it's still mounted under root, note the starting slash. This means the command deletes any and all files+directories under root, this can include mounted USB, mounted network drives and anything mounted to your root. you're basically nuking all the files you can access when you're logged in as admin/root.
I've been using scope buddy to manage my gamescope config, has auto resolution/hdr detection and you can set global defaults. you still have to pass scb -- %command% but it seems easier to manage. with proton 10 i set it to actually disable gamescope and use it to set the proton Wayland+hdr env variables and haven't had any issues so far.
my recommendation if you do is to look at refresh rate, going 120hz to 240hz felt like a much bigger upgrade to me than sdr to hdr. especially if you're playing games that depend on response times, it just feels smoother. hdr in Linux is decently there on kde but there's still issues getting it to work everywhere like Firefox, though they still look nicer than regular sdr imo. also avoid hdmi, especially if using amd!
my work we had test, stage and prod. test was very unstable as every merge auto deployed, so stage was semi stable where you would push changes you verified in test. then one day they decided to remove the stage environment. we have no data in test, other teams never passed data there, so we setup a semi production environment that has data and cost 10x as much. now they want to setup a stage environment to save costs but they don't want to call it stage because that was bad and was too expensive. so they came up with a new name and are making everyone update to push data there. honestly i can't take watching these people be praised for their innovation and promoted to make more of these shit decisions. the world's gone mad and the madder you are the more you're rewarded.
nobara is more focused on gaming and includes patches and software to play games without having to tinker a lot. you could use any distro but some games might have performance issues or require additional settings and configuration. nobara gets rid of maintaining that yourself, you might still have to tinker with a few things like launch options but not as in depth as other distros.
another popular distro is bazzite which does similar things, though i feel that's a bit more advanced to understand some concepts.
if your curious about switching i would recommend, if you can, to install a second hdd (can be cheap/small) and try one or both of them for a week to see what it's like and how well your games run. also if you don't like how one looks you can also try different desktop implementations. coming from windows, KDE will feel very familiar.
haven't used proton vpn so can't compare directly. i would assume similar performance wise.
on mullvad side you get apps to easily change locations on pretty much all platforms but also option for downloading openvpn and wireguard configs directly. only complaint I've had is you can only configure 5 devices at a time even if they're not using them at the same time which kind of sucks.
good track record, anon accounts+payments, no logs, swedish privacy laws and 3rd party security audits.
mullvad was also chosen as the backend of Mozilla's vpn
There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare, while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth.
A 2016 study found that "trade typically favors the poor", as they spend a greater share of their earnings on goods, as free trade reduces the costs of goods
So to reduce costs of goods we will make cheap items from China cost more so USA made can compete at a higher price. why doesn't the math work here? how does this result in a better economy?
have been using bazzite for a while now and don't have issues with Firefox, could be tests Google are running. they recently are targeting users of adblockers and artificially setting high load times in hopes users disable them. a decent alternative is freetube (on flathub) which is anonymous so you can't login but you can import playlists and includes ad+sponsor block. they're pretty fast at fixing Google's attempts to break it too, sometimes you might have to change instances to get it working.