idk man I jumped straight in with cachy(arch based), and its great, I went back and tried other distros this month, back to cachyos its solid, (def had some weird issues with freezes reinstalling tho, had to redo it a few times, no idea what screwed it up, but ive had similar issues with windows where reinstalling took 4 hours not like 10 minutes.

I really like their defaults and post install gaming packages speeds things up. I thought endeavor wasn't bad either, just would have to manually seek the few things I need for gaming.

I think what was most confusing was des and distros and the difference between them bit ebing clear to me. Like I thought you needed certain distros for des (obv it does help to pick the right version and install with that in mind, but most popular ones allow you to use most des) Des and customization was what I cared about and the options confused me once I finally picked cachyos thinking it and plasma were one in the same lol. I mean its pretty obvious once you look it up but from the outside perspective the de seems like a part of each and it seems like you pick the os for the look/de when its just partially that, more like their theming and app selection pertaining to the look.

I just like the aur wiki and repo, most apps have a package on there that is up to date and works well, mixed with flathub it covers 99% of things. Debtap another .5% Big fear coming to Linux was compatibility, so many different app formats, I just wanted to be able to download anything I see thats for linux and have it work by default, mostly covered by aur + flathub.