Boomers = 1950-1964
Gen X = 1965-1979
Gen Y = 1980-1994
Gen Z = 1995-2009
Gen α = 2010-2025

So ages

18-29
30-44
45-59
60+

Georg Hub, is that you?

As long as you don’t use any of the windows and use the front door like my pet penguin, I won’t mind.
And there’s a kernel of truth in there and by that I don’t mean the kernel of an apple.

Same here.
Manjaro is good enough for me, even though I hear one should use Endeavour or whatever.

I have a typematrix keyboard.

Red Flag Linux 3.0,
taking the RedNote route decades before it was cool,
but did not get much further than the installation screen,

After that it was Ubuntu -> Mint -> Arch -> Parabola -> Manjaro.

1. It matters as some distros have one maintainer or will offer you something ideological at great sacrifice, but you seem to already know that.

2. No, the biggest difference is package manager, community forum in case you meed troubleshooting, default DE (eases troubleshooting), and release type.

There are three big families of distros: Debian / Fedora / Arch. Any distro that is a derative of either of these three use their package manager.

3. Drop tuxedo and take a look at endeavourOS. It’s arch-based and arch has the best package manager of all. Also KDE is their main DE. I use Manjaro because I prefer Xfce.

In case you do use EndeavourOS, one warning, DO NOT USE THE ARCH FORUM FOR TROUBLESHOOTING!!

(If you’ve heard of ‘Sheldon Cooper’ from the tv-series ‘Big Bang theory’ or ‘Young Sheldon’. This forum is run by a real life version of him and you will get banned there immediately or very quickly, unlike other forums. Rule #1 of many is that any user troubleshooting admits that the issue is occuring on any OS other than Arch, including the closest deratives, will get banned.)

4. No. Don’t know what HDR is.

5. Tinkering with the DE is definitely fun and you should play with it. Be careful though, because the freedom you’re allowed also allows you to break things. But tinkering with the DE isn’t the worst thing you could break.