Just like your "opponents" are over-generalising, you're deliberately picking the most extreme examples to make your argument. (Batocera as a daily driver - you know that's what Hanna Montana Linux is for!)

My Linux axioms are: for most new users...

1. choice of DE is most noticeable and decides whether they like their initial experience.
2. choice of base distro family does matter a lot in the long run (Debian-based vs. Arch-based vs. Redhat-based); if you stay inside the same family (e.g. Pop!OS vs. Ubuntu vs. Zorin vs. Mint), choice matters a lot less (and DE is most impactful, c.f. point one).
3. choosing a distro with specialised security hardening (immutable systems, Nix, Qubes, Bazzite) does matter; most of these will make new users unhappy or even question their sanity.

Where you are right: yes, the choices embedded within these three axioms do matter a lot and are noticeable, so it is helpful to have an experienced user recommend a distro to you when starting out.

Where the "distro don't matter" people are right: there are a lot less choices to be made than meets the eye. Effectively, it can be boiled down to three.

Are you bored? Did you just build a strawman version of your own community to argue about something that is trivially easy to answer for everyone in this community? I am seriously confused. I have never ever heard anyone say that you could turn any distro into any other. That is just obviously not true. And every single question on your bullet point list is equally easy to answer.

When people say that it doesn’t matter which distro you use what they obviously mean is that the desktop environment has the way more immediate and tangible impact on the user experience. So as long as the newcomer choses one of the many distros that have an intuitive installer (so obviously not Arch), are reasonably up to date, have a broad software package repository, and come with one of the major environments pre installed, it really does not matter that much.

You can't turn any distro into another, and nobody is saying that. For example, you can't take NixOS and turn it into Arch. You can use Nix on Arch, though.

I think a lot of this is misunderstanding what distros are. Think of it in terms of cars. A Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta are different cars. But how different? They use the same engine, but they have different radios. You can swap parts, but at no point does that make either of them a truck.

For a lot of distros its much simpler though:

What is the different between Kali Linux distro and Debian Linux distro? Is the engine under the hood the same? Yes. Is the package management the same? Yes. Can you add the Kali repos to the package management of Debian? Yes (it's called a "Frankendebian"). Can you swap kernels between them? Yes

So, whereas NixOS and Arch can't be turned into each other, if you have two distros who are just using different "car radios", is there really a difference?

So which one can I use for gaming? Which one can I use for development?

There are differences but they're generally in user-space and not what most newbies think. Things like installers, package management, etc. But "generally speaking" all distros are capable of doing what the others can do. They just do it in different ways.

You've basically got categories.

• The mainstreams: Debian-like, RedHat-like, SuSe, Gentoo, etc.
• The Immutables
• "Specialty": Kali, Raspbian, etc.

There are different philosophies on stability vs. being up-to-date, security, etc. But the same software and drivers are available for all of them "generally speaking".

Edit: I'll add that the biggest mistake most people make is distro-hoping. People will have trouble with something like "getting a printer to work" and just start installing new distros until one works. To learn something you need to spend time with it and fix things

Edit 2: I'll also add that choice of distro matters less for experienced users since you realize that it's mostly just about preference.

For me it comes down to trust, since the distro maintainers have root on your system. You'd better trust their competence and alignment with your values!

I see often people say that the distro you are using doesn't matter.

For certain things it doesn't. Usually this is brought up in the context of someone wanting to choose between 5 possible valid alternatives to start using Linux, and the advice is "it doesn't matter, just pick whichever and when something annoys you you might understand the difference"

One can turn any distro into another. And I do not agree with that.

You can disagree all you want, it's 100% possible, stupid, but possible.

If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions?

Because philosophy matters. You don't pick a distro because it's technically superior or because it has features others don't have (with some exceptions like NixOS). You pick a distro because it's philosophy speaks to you, be it "I aim to be user friendly" or "I aim to follow KISS". This is why for the most part distro doesn't matter for newcomers, because they're looking at 5 examples of "I aim to be user friendly and..." distros.

• ... why distro hop?

Because I want to try something different and see how I feel about it.

• ... why don't you use Ubuntu then?

I did, for a long time, then I decided that building my system up was easier than tearing it down. If I was using Plasma or Gnome I wouldn't have switched probably.

• ... why don't you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?

Because Arch philosophy is KISS, meaning you have to build everything from the ground up and you're expected to understand the steps and read the manual. This is why I believe distros like Manjaro or CachyOS cause issues, they remove the initial hurdle of Arch but don't change the core philosophy, making them ticking time bombs for people who don't know their way around Linux.

• ... why don't you use Kali Linux as a server?

You do you, my servers don't usually need all of the extra tools a distro with the philosophy of "I'm a pen tester tool" has.

• ... why don't you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?

Because usually I want my daily driver to do computer stuff, and those distros philosophy is "I'm a gaming console"

• ... why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro? (or vice versa)

I don't trust either more inherently than the other, I trust distros that have a track history of good behavior.

I don't think that distros only matter to newcomers. Maybe it matters for experienced users even more.

Distros matter, they tell a lot about what you're trying to accomplish. But most newcomers are debating for days whether they should use Ubuntu, Pop, Mint, Fedora or CachyOS, and realistically they're unlikely to even understand the difference between those. Think on distros like clothes, if you're just going to the market it doesn't matter what clothes you wear, if you're going to a job interview it matters, and if you're going to do something very specific like swimming some clothes are simply better than others. But if someone asks you "do clothes matter?" You will probably reply no, because for most stuff you do as long as you're not wearing clothes with holes in them you're fine, but you can tell a lot about people by the clothes they decide to wear. It's a similar thing for distros, for most stuff it doesn't matter, for certain things it's important for others it gives some information and for some specific cases it makes a huge difference, but for the most part it's a personal choice.

While it is theoretically true that you can turn one distro into another, in practice it's not worth it. It's the same thing as trying to sell someone on "you never need to reboot to apply updates or fix things." Ye, technically true, but unless you're maintaining huge corporate servers where downtime is measured in dollars, 9 times out of 10, it's just easier to reboot and see if it fixes the issue. And yes, it will often still fix the issue.

The reason for distro hopping etc is because picking a distro is essentially choosing your defaults/ideology/character alignment. There are no wrong answers. Just go with what feels right. Newbies should distro hop to see how they align, experienced users should do it for fun and to see if a different way suits them better.

We should be herding beginners towards beginner friendly distros so they don't run into a cliff of a learning curve, but which specific one is basically arbitrary.

As for your other examples: Don't let your dreams be dreams. You can 100% use batocera as server if you like, it's entirely possible. You're just going to have to dedicate a shitload of time coercing into a server shape... but nothing's stopping you

The difference of distro is like the differences in a model of any item of the same make. This shovel might have that serated edge you like, but I like mine to have the kickstand for, camping.

Your choice of distro doesn't matter insofar as you can fix any issues you have with one, and it can be modified to work like any other.

Your choice of distro does matter in the fact that your time is limited and you probably don't want to spend days making your system work exactly like you want from a base point that was far away from that. You should choose a distro that minimizes the gap between what you want and what you get out of the box.

You just need to choose one that seems right, then you can make the modifications you need. Just make a choice though. It'll be fine if you just picked something that seems close enough.

If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions?

Don't ignore the fact that part of the reason there are so many distributions, desktops, window managers, etc etc is because a large number of skilled coders have outsized egos

There are two reasons why distro choice doesn't matter.

1. The majors are mostly fine. Ubuntu (not this one), Mint, Fedora, Arch, and Debian.
2. They're going to need to distrohop in the end anyway, and it's naive to think they're going to get it right on the first try.

After the first year fully immersed in Linux, I would say most would agree with that statement "One can turn any distro into another", at least in what matters to them.

To any newcomer I recommend to choose the environment (The tendency is for the tech-minded that come from Windows is to choose KDE, less tech-minded or straightforward thinking choose Cinnamon and exclusive Mac and Android users tend to choose Gnome).
The second thing to select is your stand on Stability vs Cutting edge. The rest of features are far, far less relevant and you can easily fine tune to your like and these is what people mean with that above statement (even the environment and stability could be customized too but most would not be able to do it).

At the end, the distro is a choice where you pick the first two parameters and the exact distro you pick is more based in convenience and/or philosophical criteria.

My case: I played with 5 environments and KDE is my cup of tea. Then, I choose a distro in the middle of the road with updates (OpenSuse Tumbleweed) and while extremely happy two updates within 8 months gave me two hiccups (nothing mayor) but I decided I needed more Stability. While I consider Fedora to be the "best" distro by just a hairline, since it has the most resources, but philosophically I am against due to IBM being its main backer, not to mention, US may cause problems "exporting" in a near future... yes you can fork, but you still being dependent in the main source for a while, not to mention supporting IBMś aims. So I am Debian (MX Linux actually) all the way now. However, I recommend to most Mint (for the most conservative) and TuxedoOS (for those looking for a more contemporary look) to most people I encounter.

The rest of distros, or are just niche (for instance Deepin and Kylin cater for Chinese language, Cachy for gamers, etc) or are distros with far less resources to do it properly, but I passionately applaud their existence since they all are contributing with the good cause.

I don't mind them, except Ubuntu. Broken by default since it started. I don't know how or why, but it is the most fragile least user friendly one of the bunch.

Who says that?

I think recommending archlinux as a first distro is fine if the person is so inclined. (CS students)

It all comes down to the repositories after all. Different distros have different update cycles and policies.

Oh, also some distros apply a little bit different graphics and customisation on the default setup.

After that, it is all the same. Distro choice does matter, but to the common user/newcomer is basically irrelevant.

why distro hop?

Fun waste of time, good way to learn how to setup a Linux system by doing that repeatedly.

why don't you use Ubuntu then?

It's a good system, go ahead with it. I don't like very much their customisations, but it is cool system after all.

why don't you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?

He will have to read through a few guides and webpages in order to get a working system, compared to reading a single webpage which explains how to flash any other distro on a usb and be done with it.

why don't you use Kali Linux as a server?

The advantage of Kali is that it is designed to live in ram and everything you do is destroyed when you switch off the computer, this is a bit of a pain in the ass if you want to run a server.

why don't you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?

Don't even know what those are, but pretty much because I don't care: the system I have is good and I know there's little difference between distros.

why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro?

They're for different purposes (mainly). Redhat provides tech support. Canonical, well I don't know what canonical does. If you want good support for maybe a large installation with many computers, paying for red hat may very well be worth it.

Why have you not done a basic search to understand the objectives of the various distros and posiilities, before posing these questions?

As you said here a lot of people here either like to downplay the differences between the distros or use them in a way that makes them not notice those differences. I'm with them in saying that if you plan to distro-hop just to change the DE you should probably learn how linux works, but there are definitely differences. Some examples:

• If you want to run ROS2 then ONLY supported distro is Ubuntu
• Before choosing a distro which has systemd removed (like Artix) you should definitely make sure what you are doing, there are definitely differences here
• The frequency of updates of packages is an important thing. Last year it was almost impossible to install Hyprland because it used packages that were too new