Well, first of all, get a Distro with mirrors that have the newest packages. Also, you could say that xfce is kinda superior since it uses way less Ram than other Guis. Also, delete all those packages you dont need, especially on ubuntu since there its more or less the worst. Also, depending on the distro, they may put certain patches in their official mirrors, so that helps too

Taking into account that about everyone is migrating to Wayland by now, an AMD Gpu should pretty much be mandatory i think

what do you think of this in terms of security?

This is not Security. This is another way for Google to Bypass the Adblockers that People set up and at the same time collect information about you even from Websites that dont have their Adsense Service. And all this shit is wrapped in a package and advertised to people that dont know better as a fReE VpN fOr HiDiNg yOuR dAtA, if not by google directly, then by all the “Youtube Lifehack” Channels.

This is not a Problem with the Framework Laptop, more so that you most likely didnt install the appropiate drivers and/or vulcan and OpenGL

Its 2023 New batches are starting to ship about weekly, currently at batch 5