Arch breaks all the time. It has to because upstream is usually always changing so breakage is inevitable.
Though a person's mileage on this may vary (less update frequency, less no of programs etc.), the constant thing about rolling release is that breakages within software releases are to be expected.
You can setup your Arch with grub menu btrfs snapshots just like NixOS for convenient rollbacks. NixOS has too steep a learning curve, coming from someone who recently tried it and ended up being somewhat disappointed by it. NixOS sounds good on paper but in reality it is a long way from a mature product for desktop or general use.
As you mentioned Arch has AUR which packages just about anything and everything you could ever want in the future. And the Arch Wiki will never be "not relevant" so long as you are using Linux anywhere, the Arch Wiki is a handy reference.
Any reputable VPS will have clean IPs as they usually have strict TOS for customers abusing their network. Choose whichever fits your needs.
Sounds like you have a network bottleneck. Check your router's bandwidth settings for something something duplex (can't recall exact name), make sure the settings are max/full.
If that fails, most Jellyfin clients should allow you to specify large cache sizes.
I use gocryptfs with a GUI wrapper called Vaults. It's very neat.
Skip Emby and look into setting up Jellyfin with Nginx proxy manager. At the end of the day, whatever solution you go with be sure to enable good password security or more advanced security options like 2FA for your exposed Jellyfin service.
I thought we were going to wipe Russia out of the world's map...
Have you thought of doing a clean install or at least trying a different distro?
I had always used Windows for the longest time. I used a certain cloud service and was impressed with how easy it was to manage services with docker. Fast forward a couple of years and I got a small mini-PC with Windows. I tried to install docker on it but Windows back then had no way of using Docker without virtualizing it with Hyper-V, a Pro feature. I thought let me give this another try. I tried to replicate the same setup with NSSM tools. It kinda worked eventually but it was a dirty hack at best and I did not like this solution.
I thought to myself, why would I pay Microsoft to use a feature I can use for free with Linux and get better performance while at it.
Here we are 7-8 years later.
Google has always done this. I wouldn't know though because I've turned off a lot of the personalization settings and always use adblocking DNS.
LOL. This is funny AF.
No. Not a recent opinion. I've used Arch for more than 3 years now.