I’ve been using Pop!_OS (and only it) for about 3 years now because Windows messed itself up on one of my laptops and I didn’t feel like reinstalling it. During those 3 years, Nvidia on my two laptops has “just worked” with absolutely zero broken upgrades I can remember. I’m not trying to install a bunch of GNOME plugins to make it usable because that’s already said and done out of the box. There are zero annoying things running in the background sucking up all my processor time. So, overall, I haven’t snoozed more from a Linux distro, in contrast to trying to set up Arch on one of my SBCs.
Because of that, Pop will be the ONLY thing I’m installing on my computers for the foreseeable future. :) I wish all Linux distros were as boring as this.
I’m not sure how you made your backups but Timeshift worked for me in the past. However, I was restoring the same drive, not a new SSD like you’re going to do. Good luck