That's not Linux doing that. It's the demons in your hardware trying to escape. They normally don't cause too many issues luckily, but if you don't close the portals occasionally they can take over your system.
Yeah, those tend to be pre-folder settings for the File Explorer.
Like View options, thumbnails and such.
It's been a while for me, but I think there was something specially for thumbnails too.
You might find one if you go into the folder options and set a folder to optimized for pictures/videos and add some to it.
this is a complete uneducated guess from a relatively tech-illiterate guy, but could it contain mac-specific information about weird non-essential stuff like folder backgrounds and item placement on the no-grid view?
They're Metadata specific for Macs.
If you download a third party compression tool they'll probably have an option somewhere to exclude these from the zips but the default tool doesn't Afaik.