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Look into btrfs and its snapshot feature.

You mentioned you have tried Nobara... I believe that uses btrfs by default, being based on Fedora. Most distros use ext4 by default and you would have to switch to btrfs during installation.

If your OS is installed on a partition formatted to btrfs, you can make instant snapshots of its current state. Then you can install whatever you like, make whatever config changes you want... and if something breaks you can instantly revert to the previous state. Or any state you ever made a snapshot of. The snapshots happen instantly, and initially cost zero disk space, because nothing is copied. It's just a bookmark. Copies of data only start being made as you start making changes after making the snapshot. This happens on a block level, so changing a single byte in a 10GB file won't copy the whole file but just the block that changed (usually 4 kb). Since the filesystem is doing this, it's completely transparent... you never see it happening or interact with it, unless you're making or restoring snapshots. This filesystem also has many other advanced features.

The cost of those bells and whistles is that btrfs is quite a bit slower than more traditional filesystems. It's a good idea to have a separate partition or device, formatted to something like ext4 or XFS, for things where you want maximum IO speed and don't need fancy filesystem level version management. But it's a lifesaver for restoring a broken system with an instant "undo".

Thanks Isnark (and you too GloryBeckons). It does help. I had a company but sold it and all the computers etc. went with. The home Mac my wife had bought me as a gift was creeping slow and barely usable after I updated the Mac OS and it pissed me off so much I left the Mac (and windows) building.

I bought a 10 year old refurbished Dell Optiplex (DELL Optiplex 990 SFF PC, Intel Core i5 Processor, 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD, DVDRW, Keyboard & Mouse, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, Windows 10 Pro, 20in LCD Monitor (Renewed)'])for $277 and stuck a 2nd 2TB SSD screamingly fast Hard drive on it as my main drive and with Mint it's as fast as any new $2000-$3000 computer for my needs. Not a gamer so I didn't need some stuff. I Nuked and repaved the old legacy drive to boot to Ubuntu in case anything went bad, but haven't needed it in the year I've had the machine. I fucking love Linux and the whole linux software environment. I was never a tech guy as I had so many around or hired in at times, and we had Windows Server at work which was fairly complex to me. I didn't need to know jack or shit about any of that, but I'm digging diving in this new world of fuck around and learn it myself.

Cinnamon is hands down the best DE right now providing you have decent hardware. Use XFCE if you have an old junker around. Plasma is a nice DE but I find it has issues with scaling on 4k and in VirtualBox the screen flickers. SteamOS is going Plasma, so hopefully working with Valve will give the Plasma team a leg up.