For new users the main question is not what operating system but what window manager as that is what shapes day to day user interaction. KDE plasma is a solid choice.

Installing it on a separate drive should be no problem. Just select the correct drive during install.

I use F10 to get to the boot menu on drive and select the drive it needs to boot from there. I have used it once in the last year and although it required many updates its still working.

Search engine? I started rawdoging urls a while ago.

The internet is increasingly more useless, the sites i really need are bookmarked anyway.

We already got half life 3. It was called half life alyx specifically to get away from the massive pressure that came with the meme.

Its also important to know valves strength is that they don’t need to pump out games, they make profit enough though steam. This makes sure they can put time in exploring new concepts and innovation and only release games that maintain the perception of excellence, which they could lose fast if they released a “mid” tier game.