I was gonna comment this, decided not to, then decided the info should be part of this thread either for OP or future readers, so here goes:

Enterprise Linux distributions are unbeatable for their purpose. To your point, I’ve never in my entire career had even the smallest issue maintaining one, they’re wonderful. They achieve this, though, by being a stable, truly versioned release that will never see anything beyond minor upgrades. The reason why nobody recommends server distros for gaming is because of hardware compatibility and library support, and you end up maintaining more of your own junk anyway. Got the latest gpu? Great, compile your drivers.

Enterprise Linux distros are awesome and the most painless Linux experience imaginable, as well as a great workstation experience too BUT they typically are among the worst options for gaming if you want a simple system.

That’s brutal. Did you get back on your feet?

paccache -r got me about the same

I love flameshot, but unfortunately it’s support for more than one monitor on wayland has me looking for an alternative :(

Alternative found: Spectacle in rectangular capture mode is the best

I’m aware, but thank you. This post was intended to be a guide for people that end up in this situation.

I’m aware. Any local storage wouldn’t do much about a poorly aimed rm, though.

100%. The organization wasn’t there yet and seeing that I wanted to remain employed at the time I wasn’t going to put up a fight against management 3 layers above me. Legacy business are a different beast when it comes to dumb stuff like that.