Try pop_os. It’s gnome tiling can be enabled and disabled from the top bar and it’s defaults are sane and easy to change.

That’s actually an accessibility feature intended to keep the eye level roughly at the same position; the person saying “I hate it when editors do it” is really not understanding why this is a feature and not a bug.

Maybe give Pop_OS a try. It’s Debian/Ubuntu based and works well. It’s tiling extension makes gnome usable for me (and it’s optional/off by default).

Nvidia is a breeze (included with the image iirc).

Also check https://github.com/junegunn/fzf and https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide

Two great utilities that will reduce the number of file jumping and searching you need to do. :)

More useful tools: https://zaiste.net/posts/shell-commands-rust/