I see often people say that the distro you are using doesn’t matter. One can turn any distro into another. And I do not agree with that. If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions? I always said, if distros don’t matter…
- … why distro hop?
- … why don’t you use Ubuntu then?
- … why don’t you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?
- … why don’t you use Kali Linux as a server?
- … why don’t you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?
- … why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro? (or vice versa)
I don’t think that distros only matter to newcomers. Maybe it matters for experienced users even more.
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.