If you need stability, I definetly recommend you going with Debian. I used it for two years as my daily driver and it worked 100% of the time without any issues. I never gamed on it though, so I cant tell you anything about that. Yast would be the strongest argument for openSUSE as well as 1-click full disk encryption with encrypted boot and secure boot from the installer. I hope this can help you with your decision, have a nice day :)
Dont use VPNs where you provide personal information as ISPs and law enforcement can and do request data from those VPN services. Use something like Mullvad (and pay with XMR if you are paranoid :)