This isn’t like a phone OS where they add ressource-draining new features every 6 months.
If your computer can run the OS at installation, it’ll be able to run it for a long time.
One good reason not to use Arch is if you have a limited internet connection.
Updates are often 1 GB or more per week, depending on what you have installed.
So if that’s an issue, Debian is the better choice.

What a weird war. Apparently Israel, Iran and US all won.

No, cops jailed her!
AI can’t put handcuffs on a person.
It can’t even make a decision.
Stop deflecting the blame.

Time to distro-hop!

I hope this rant helped you vent your frustration.
Admittedly, “You can game on Linux without issues” is bending the truth. That’s limited to Steam. Outside of Steam games, especially with cracked and modded games, you’re in “might work” and “might need various amounts of fiddling” territory.
That doesn’t mean Linux is trash, it’s an awesome OS, just not the right one for your use case.

The feeling of being a hacker who outsmarted a huge corporation, after activating Windows 95 with the FCKGW license key (I was 12).

That’s in Firefox at least, but you have to turn it on in the settings.

Checking for hdd errors (and fixing them) is done automatically in regular intervals during boot by fsck.
Smartmontools can give you all info you need on hdd health.
And disk encryption is handled by LUKS. In all major user-friendly distros (Mint, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, Debian, Fedora, Bazzite, …) this can be set up in the graphical installer by clicking a checkbox.
To encrypt a hard drive after installation, there are graphical frontends (KDE partition manager and Gnome Disc Utility).

What does this software do, specifically?

can’t really wrestle with them like another cat would.

You can, if you put on an oven mitt.

With my cat, it’s an invitation to play fight.
So I put on an oven mitt, tickle her belly and she clamps down on it and tries to kill it.
But she doesn’t extend her claws or actually bite down, and when I remove my hand she goes back to the position on her back. Which tells me she seems to enjoy it.

Hell, let’s go one step further and force it on the user level:
Every time you want to access an online service, a government-appointed doctor comes to your house and does an X-ray of your clavicle to determine bone ossification, dental examinations, and a DNA methylation test to determine your biological age.

our local leftist third space.

You have no idea how jealous I am.

I hope you enjoy 90 teeth and 60 claws homing in on your family jewels.

This is my life. Whenever I lay down in bed, my cats will cover me.
It looks nice at first but it makes masturbation very inconvenient and often dangerous.

There’s some options, but it’s not something I’d rely on to work.
In my experience, there’s about a 10% chance to get something running straight out of the box with Wine, 30% with helpers like Lutris.
With Steam it’s more like 90%, which is about the same as on Windows.

Gaming, cracks and mods would be the biggest issue. Linux gaming happens on Steam, outside of that you’re pretty much never guaranteed to get it running.
So if you have a large library of pirated games, Linux might not be for you.

Self-hosting on Windows Server is a pain I don’t need in my life.

Yes, Debian. It’s called the universal operating system for a reason.

Ordering that is the second fastest way to get beat up in an Irish pub, after ordering an Irish Car Bomb.