I've used something like this in the past and it worked perfectly. I needed it to access my pc remotely without having my physical monitor turned on for no reason (I'd have used ssh but I needed to run graphical software)
Somehow people think linux is hard
Xbox controllers ship with a firmware bug out of the box (thanks microslop!), you need to update the firmware to make them work properly on Linux, but it needs to be done through windows as explained in this section in the Arch Wiki. EDIT: you still need to install the xpadneo driver once your firmware is updated.
A decent option for those of us that don't have and don't want to have windows around is to bring your controller with you to a computer shop, along with a usb cable, and use one of the demo computers to update it.
If spending money is an option, a lot of people already recommended 8bitdo controllers, I can only say I agree with that. I have the ultimate 2c, which is about ~30 eur, comes with hall effect joysticks, so no stick drift ever, and uses a dongle for the wireless connection, with an option to use bluetooth as well. Plus they come in some really pretty color combinations. Hard to beat that for the money.
If you have enough space and plan on using libvirt or any other virtualization technology that just lets you use img files as virtual disks, you can just dump the entire disk with dd:
(replace /dev/sda with the disk containing windows)
dd if=/dev/sda of=./windows-disk.img status=progress
The CPU is alright and the RAM should be sufficient for most tasks.
There are a couple of things that could impact performance here, first the SSD could be on its way out, or slow to begin with, so maybe post some info on that.
You can use gnome disks to get more information on your ssd, here's a screenshot on my system, with some information obscured. The model name should be enough.

You can benchmark the SSD using either gnome disks again, as shown here:

Or alternatively you can use KDiskMark. Give us some numbers, maybe it's gonna be as simple as replacing your SSD.
Another thing that could make your system feel sluggish, since you lament little freezes happening, is Plasma itself. I know what I said about desktop environment havyness, and I still stand by it: it's not that Plasma is "heavier" or anything like that, it's just that some of its code is not very well optimized and with slower drives it can show. Brodie Robertson made a video about this a couple of years ago, see if what he describes matches your problem, but consider that this is old information at this point and while some of these issues might still exist, they might have already been fixed.
I have mid computers from 2010 running that take far less than 2 seconds to open a browser, I think there's either some missing driver for your hardware or something wrong with your hardware in the first place. Please post your exact specs so that we can try giving you better advice.
Also worth noting that for modern-ish computers the desktop environment is the least offender when it comes to resource consumption. Any modern browser will use roughly at least 2x memory compared to the desktop environment.
Most likely
I am no expert but I'd try tracing the path that the fuel makes from the tank to the injectors and see if there's any leaks. The cracked gas cap gasket could suggest that other rubber parts in your bike might also be degraded.
Might be worth investigating the ICU sensors, I believe there should be some attached to the exhaust pipe. Could also be a problem with the ICU itself.
just use what works for you? 14h battery life is gonna happen when we have proper arm laptops with good linux support, in the meantime you have to compromise. I think there are some arm laptops that are usable on linux, but it's gonna be a science project not a stable workhorse machine
Most reviews on youtube are already telling the full story. My review is this: it's a good controller, comfortable to hold, with tmr joysticks, gyro, trackpads and back buttons. I use it to play controller focused games, and as a mouse/keyboard solution for htpc purposes. It does the job very well, can't complain. It's also "just a controller" with more features, so there isn't much to talk about in the first place.
I don't know much about quicksync but it's very likely that you're just missing something on debian to have it working. I believe the hardware in that mini pc (particularly the 32gb of ram, that's practically gold) is more than capable of running all the services you listed.