Have you tried KDE? It took me a year to change from GNOME but it was well worth it. I don’t use a laptop so not sure if switching DE will affect battery life.
It could be a problem with hibernation and sleep. My desktop will never hibernate or sleep, doesn’t matter the distro: Fedora, Pop or Tumbleweed. Maybe look into that as well?
I began with using Pop!, especially if you have a nVidia card it will streamline a lot of the problems and dependencies of having a nVidia GPU.
As for the terminal it’s a really powerful tool. You can totally wipe your system if you put in the wrong sudo command, or edit files in your root directory. The usual commands like cd (change directory), ls (list files and folders) are essential when you navigate through your file system. CodeCademy has a bash learning program which will go through the basics.
Remember to not run a super user (sudo) command if you’re not sure what it does. That also goes for changing files that are not in your home directory. I borked my first two installs, so in the beginning: backup essential files and keep trying, there is also no shame in reinstalling the entire OS.
Feel free to reach out if you have any more specific questions!
You could try https://safing.io/