I tried both Manjaro and Endeavour early in my distro hoping days. Endeavor, like others have said, is basically Arch with a good installer and some good defaults, but it is still Arch, which requires you to pay more attention and get more involved in your OS.

Manjaro was kind of an “easier Arch” for me until they pushed an update and black-screened every one of my computers. Twice.

After that, I was done, which is a shame because I rather liked it.

I think that the closest thing you will find to PastePal is CopyQ.

https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/

Penguins don’t do Windows!

About a year ago, I trialed both Proton Mail and Tuta mail. Proton mail worked out better for my needs, but YMMV. 

One nice thing about switching providers is that it gives you the opportunity to rid yourself of years of built-up cruft and spam.

Do yourself a favor and skip the USB drive - they are ridiculously slow compared to a compact external SSD. I found a cheap m.2 enclosure on Amazon and put an old SSD in it and the speed difference is breathtaking.

My SSD has a bunch of Linux distros grouped into folders along with Windows 10 & 11, every macOS from 10.13 to present, along with Rescuezilla, Hiren’s and a few others I can’t remember at the moment.

Rescuezilla was my #1 go-to during my days of distro hopping. Makes it super easy to try out a distro on bare metal instead of a VM.