Debian with KDE. Or Manjaro.

No, no OS “borks” itself. You just didnt realise what you did and why it borked your system in the end. This happens to Windows-Users too. I ended up reinstalling so many Windows machines and the user always told me they didnt do anything. I use Linux for about three years now and had to reinstall several times, because I made mistakes I couldn`t identify as mistakes at that moment. Sometimes Linux is complicated and you have to search for a solution. If you would have used Linux your whole life an switched to Windows, your experience would be very similar.

Sometimes I use termux and yt-dlp or ocrmypdf because its easy and much safer than those sketchy websites. Thats it.