Not quite a tablet but if you’d consider a convertible, the Framework 12 is a solid choice.

If you’re looking for outgoing requests, check out OpenSnitch. It should do exactly what you’re looking for.

Upgrade it to 9.0

Steam is natively installed and works perfectly. You can install other packages, but it effectively adds another layer which slows down updates a bit.

Preface: I don’t have any experience with Garuda or Nobara but I have used Bazzite.

Not to make the choice harder, but Bazzite does come with Plasma 6. You can have it boot to the SteamOS UI or to the Plasma Desktop.

Bazzite is a great choice for stability but you need to be aware it doesn’t operate like a traditional Linux distribution since it’s based on ostree and is immutable. Package installations are primarily done through Flatpak, AppImage or exported via Distrobox.

My kids. Not much else though.

For me it was

— I’d seen weirder things in Perl scripts —

Just perfect. No notes.

The AUR requires an AUR helper like paru or yay to interact with it that way. Otherwise you can clone the repo using git and make the package yourself.

Have you looked at the Starlite? It’s more expensive than an android tablet but might do what you’re looking for.

Heard about this the other day. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising.

To be fair, arch could look like that after a few days.