I’m actually a big fan of the Gnome workflow on laptops. When using a mouse i HATE Gnome but when using a trackpad? It has no peers. It’s entirely designed around gestures. three fingers up to switch apps, side to side to switch desktops, up a 2nd time to get the apps page, etc. I do wish it was more customizable like KDE but it’s my go to on a laptop simply because I can’t stand using a trackpad with anything else.

I would honestly just create a tiny dual boot of another linux distro with LUKS KVM encryption on the entire thing. It has its own sudo, and is locked behind your encryption password. You just boot into a small 30GB or so private session that only you have access to while leaving the main distro untouched.