I like plasma the most. I mostly like the defaults and KDE tools but in some cases enjoy the vast customization options. I haven’t tried any others in five years or so, so my opinion is a bit off. Could never get used to Gnome.

I had a quick look at the mint one when installing Linux for other people and it seemed decent as well.

Man I’ve read that few months ago and had already forgotten most of it. Reminds me of adjusting the SWAP partition of two VMs though.

Just I’d enable ssh asap so you don’t have to connect all that stuff permanently. There’s a way to modify the boot SD card so Raspian comes up with Wi-Fi/network and ssh enabled iirc, so you don’t need to connect anything but a power cable

You can certainly install some Linux on it (Raspian is Linux) and then just tinker around. Check how much RAM it actually has and see which apps work on it.

Rolling releases, great docs, great amount of software available with the package manager, especially with the AUR.

I went through the manual installation a few times and while the general process is annoying and error-prone, after setting up the basics many things worked great out of the box, even the printer I once had. I’m on Endeavour now which mostly does exactly what I want.