Is there any reason? You're effectively wasting half the drive by using that space for OSes you almost never use.

If you ever happen to need Windows, which I don't see happening as you yourself can't imagine an actual use case, you can just go to the library or borrow a friend's computer or maybe use your phone.

As for Mint, do you just have it to experiment with? If you're just trying to try out other distros, a virtual machine or even live USBs are much easier ways to quickly try out new systems without having to clear actual partitions.

If you had much more storage then sure, waste some of it, but you're really gonna be missing that 120gb if you use your computer for... basically anything.

The order of the partitions basically doesn't matter at this point -- I think having a boot partition first used to be important for MBR schemes but I'm pretty sure in the UEFI era you can have them in whatever order. As others have mentioned, you could combine your EFI partitions, but doing so to an already installed system is slightly complex. You also could shrink some of your EFI and boot partitions, I'm not sure of the recommended sizes off the top of my head but I think they could be smaller. On the other hand, your swap partition should probably be bigger -- making it the same size as your RAM is a good rule of thumb and will enable hibernation (I think).

On a more serious note, as others have said, you'll probably burn through these weird storage limitations quickly.

Also, what do you mean by "sensitive matters" on Mint? Because almost any way you spin it, I feel like it's not a great idea:
- If you're talking professional, confidential work with clients, keeping it on the same device where you do anything personal sounds like a terrible idea, and it's probably worth it to shell out for a dedicated device just for this.
- If it's more personal things like government documents, medical records, and other things I'll neglect to name here, running a separate operating system just for those just feels like unnecessary paranoia and will cause you unnecessary trouble. If you're careful, it shouldn't be a problem - the major browsers prevent file access through protections against cross-site scripting.

Also, as I said in another comment here, please upgrade that drive before you put a lot of data on it. If you don't and you run out of storage later (a near-certainty on 256GB), you'll have to go through the effort of getting everything copied, which may include equipment purchases and several hours of your time when you could jut do it right now while your important files are still small enough to fit on a flash drive right now. Save yourself the future trouble.

Anyhow, I wish you happy Linux usage.

Mobile CPUs (any any direct-die cooling for that matter) are more prone to pump-out, where the chip and heatsink expand at different rates with temperature changes, and the varying gap between the two creates a pumping action. It's best to use a thicker paste to avoid it, or even better, a thermal pad. Not that it's the best in the long run, but I have gotten away with the thinner MX-4 in my laptop for about a year.

If you have maybe $30 to spare, consider buying some PTM 7950 since it's second only to liquid metal (very hard to get right), and should be good for many years. Be sure to get it from reputable sellers though since there are fakes for PTM 7950.

Fam, I loathe saying this, but -please- if you desire engagement, then at least put some honest effort into proofreading your writings before posting them. I'm just assuming stuff at this point because I can barely grasp your intent/writing. *sigh*

Why do atomic distros which are supposed to me more stable, superior to some degree immutable environments lack good backup options? You can hack things together and there are somewhat installable tools. Like timeshift or etc etc.

Which distros even come by default -so installed OOTB- with "good backup options"? Which atomic distros is this statement even based on?

But it seems they place a lot more emphasis on rolling back poor updates in the event than total system backups.

Because their atomicity barely goes beyond updates. The 'atomic' in "atomic distros" mostly describes how its updates are atomic; i.e. the system either updates successfully or doesn't update at all. Thus, by design, we have two possible states after an update: a 'successfully' updated system or a 'failed' update resulting in the same state as the previous. Atomic distros aren't smart enough to catch all 'breakage' occurred by 'successful' updates. As such, most of these breakages will only show them after trying to boot into updated system. Deleting/erasing the previous known good state without verifying that the new/upcoming state works well is foolish. Especially on a distro that's got robust updates otherwise. Hence, the functionality of rollbacks on updates is almost trivially done/applied to atomic distros, as it (almost) follows by design.

So, what I'm interested in is the following:
- Are you familiar with the notion of stateless systems? Is this (perhaps) what you're (actually) seeking?

By default it you should have true backups then layer in rollbacks. Not the other way around. Am I missing something?

I think my previous paragraph should be enlightening in this regard. If you disagree (or something/otherwise), then please feel free to elaborate why you think so. Btw, what do you even mean with "true backups?