Linux

You are pretty clearly just starting off on this journey. What I'll say is this:

1. Perfect is the enemy of good, as long as you understand your risk.
2. Know your risk profile as it relates to your level of proficiency. Which means that you should probably not install Qubes and then pirate a bunch of shit, because you don't even know what the pitfalls are.

If you don't know what a risk profile is, then start there. That will help you understand what you should and should not be doing at your level of knowledge. Then, just get started, but be open minded. Nothing is a silver bullet.

I've personally found Qubes to be the best privacy/anonymity solution for my risk profile, but explaining that would be hundreds of pages. You just have to try it. For example, here's one challenge: you know that VPN is recommended for torrenting. How do you use Qubes with a VPN? That is a great road to go down for understanding, and you can start by searching the Qubes forums and documentation.

Accept that this will take a good chunk of your time, especially if you only have one PC and will be daily driving Qubes. So, maybe don't start this journey during a busy time in your life when you have lots of other responsibilities. This stuff is best done as a "deep dive", where you just set aside time and work until you've accomplished your goal.

Finally: interact with the community. Hit a dead end? Post in the appropriate community (or post asking where that is). Join group chats, which are faster than forums and more personal. Don't just go it alone... you will burn out quick!

Why do you say Tails isn't for you? If it's because it's inconvenient to use, I doubt you're going to like Qubes.

Look op, you kind of want to drive around without wanting to put in the work to either lern how a car works or what the road rules are.

Security is not something you install and the you got it.

I highly suggest to learn what the common risks are and how they work, then how to counter them.

This whole security and privacy thing requires both effort and knowledge, that is why corpos fuck over people so much, because they ain't willing to put in the work to care.

P.s sorry I reread my answer and I come off a bit harsh, what I mean is that by prompting a community like this with your kind of questions like if we were an AI will not work towards getting you good answers. You need to learn first and one of the first lessons is that there is no security and a casual "I will be opening sketchy files". A better question is: how can I open sketchy files and still be safe?

Qubes requires a lot of configuring to be properly secure and you have to have a fair bit of understanding about virtualization.

I'd suggest starting with Whonix . It still uses some of the same virtualization technology, and like Tails routes everything over Tor, and provides excellent protection against threats on your local network (due to separating Gateway into its own VM)

Also Whonix is straightforward to set up. You first install VirtualBox, then literally just double-click the Whonix .OVA file to install. It fires up two virtual machines: Gateway and Workstation. You use the Workstation; the Gateway handles Internet traffic (and you generally don't login to it)

You can save files, customize your desktop, use it like a normal computer.

EDIT: just noticed this

opening risky files

For that, your best bet is a burner laptop that you re-image regularly. Qubes is also a pretty good way to do this; you'd set up an extremely locked-down execution environment for the "risky file".

But if the risky file attacks Linux-based OSes, you're hosed even under Whonix or Tails.