It’s fun once you get all your stuff working and know what you’re doing. Even then it can be a challenge at times. I started in 1998 with suse Linux and it was just a brag back then.

I run a pi hole and use my laptop (Linux) connected to a projector. No hassle.

Ubuntu my dude. I started fiddling with it years ago and it’s my go to when I need a good desktop / gaming system. Any distro is gonna be a steep learning curve and a great way to go about it is to get a crapola system and start banging Linux on it. You’ll be frustrated and then search and find that there is a massive amount of community support for most distros. I use a Raspberry PI 4 running Ubuntu 64 for all my AV needs… Drives the projector and stereo and also serves as a retro gaming over the projector deal. We’re all fed up with windows.