I use BTRFS on my Artix system, Ext4 on my Librem 5, Ext4 on my Devuan laptop and Ext4 on my Pinebook Pro. Basically when given the choice in the installer I choose BTRFS but if the installer doesn’t let me pick I don’t care enough to manually partition. I have had no negative experiences with any file system luckily so I just roll with whatever.

One of the reasons I prefer GOG is that I don’t want to use a client. I prefer to download offline installers and then run my games through Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher.

I used the automatic options for disk partitoning so i’m unsure.

A libre version of Devuan. It uses the libre kernel by default and doesn’t ship with any closed source programs or drivers in the repos.

https://www.gnuinos.org/

Yep that is accurate.

Red Eclipse or Xonitic for me

I use Pragma-Messenger. It’s based out of Switzerland. Never seen it go down and I use it daily so i’d call it stable. The site’s in German so you may have to use a translate extension in your browser if you don’t read German.

https://pragma-solution.com/de/Produkte/messenger

Thanks, I ended up going with your suggestion.