My little anecdote. I was watching a YT video where the guy spent 10 minutes explaining where to go to download and install python, git, and something else. The entire time I was cringing thinking that's a one liner.
Cool. So what I've found useful is to spend a little bit of time upfront to decide how you want to do your partitions, and what file systems. So, for example, I don't care about backing up projects (yay git) and their build artifacts, don't care about .cache, but do want backups of .config and my steam library. I use btrfs for snapshots, and btrfs send that to my NAS, but obviously a lot of stuff can be restored easily so that's bind mounts.
Or use LVM (with or without LUKs) and at least give yourself some wiggle room for later.
Once you've picked your flavour I'd say choose how you want to partition and manage backups / snapshots. I see you have 2 ssds, so are you planning on raiding them with something like btrfs? Do you want to encrypt your drives?
Kenshi - a brutal, and sometimes janky squad free roaming game. I have far too many hours in that.
Pulsar - Lost Colony - Fun game if you have a few friends around. Pretend to be Captain Kirk - except chaos.
Rimworld -- Dwarf Fortress lite
Dwarf Fortress - Grand daddy inspiration for most other games
Torchlight - Diablo
Project Zomboid - All your top down zombie hunting dreams come true
Carrier Command - Drone carrier warfare
Nebulous Fleet Command - The Expanse.
Does X4 count as Indie?