We're on a tech forum, where people probably need less handholding with tech gear than the general public does.

And, once no longer a newb, Debian is easily one of the best distros to be in, for many purposes, long-term.

Why not start with one of the most popular and principled distros, and see whether it just works for you?

From there, if your eye ever starts wandering towards some strange other distro, you have a well-informed good baseline to compare against.