I am really really really considering going with Zorin OS when I will eventually switch my main desktop. One previous OS I used was CachyOS and while I DID enjoy it immensely I always have trouble with updates as it almost always breaks my system in some way. One thing I wanted to know is if there is anyway to further optimize Zorin OS. I know that its not as simple as getting the Cachy Repo/Kernel, as those are Arch based. So what CAN I do that would make the optimization atleast slightly comparable to CachyOS? Those optimizations would be for everyday use and gaming. Any help is greatly appreciated
You can't use the Cachy Kernel but you could use the Liquorix Kernel.
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You could use many kernels, as ponce said above, one is liquorix, but there's a multitude that you could use and test (Zen, Xanmod, Hardened, Realtime, Clear Linux had one, idk about anymore). Each have their various use cases, so using and testing would be the best way to find what would be best for your use case.
You could also upgrade your Mesa stack to be a more up to date one, using something like the kisak ppa ( kisak-mesa fresh : kisak). There are other paths for upgraded mesa stacks as well, depending on what you're going for. I generally like sticking to this one, however.
Another thing to do is to close and disable any services that you may or may not be using. For example bluetooth or wifi if you're not going to be using those, or samba, etc. If you wanted to go even more in depth, you could alter system-d services to remove / disable the ones that you won't use, to free up more resources that way as well (you'd want to be a little more careful with that, but there are lots of services that people would find redundant or not important within systemd). There's a gui application available that's actually pretty good, but for the life of me I can't recall what it was named right now.
There's actually a lot you can do to trim down the system, but it really comes down to what you're wanting to do. Zorin has a lot going on by default, but that makes sense because it's meant for a large array of users. That means they need to cover a lot of bases on what people may or may not want to do on their systems.
Oh also, you could remove and purge snap if you don't use snaps. I recommend that almost immediately on every install, I just find Flatpaks better if you need something like that.
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On another note, since Zorin is Ubuntu based and Ubuntu is Debian based, is it recommended to use Software made for Debian or Ubuntu?
Also for testing when I, for example, install the Liqourix Kernel, I can still go back to the original Zorin kernel, correct?
Correct, you can have multiple kernels installed at once, and can swap through the grub menu at any time. That being said, I would recommend that you have the grub menu visible at boot for a few seconds just to make things easier in case you can't boot with a kernel that doesn't want to work. You can always get to the grub menu even if it isn't visible by default, but just having it there at the ready is nice in my eyes.
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Software is made for debian and ubuntu as .deb packages. .deb packages work on both (also on Zorin). Sometimes there are separate guides for ubuntu and debian, then follow the ones for ubuntu.
You can also use flatpaks and snaps and appimages.
.rpm packages don't work on Zorin, but can be converted into .deb packages.
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In most Cases it will treated the same. But it could happen that You have it seperated for Ubuntu and Debian - maybe when You have to add a Repo or there are several Versions for different OS Versions. But this should be explained then in Instructions.