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I cannot begin to address the issue of "agendae" of various Linux and BSD distro builders, as any number of disagreements have arisen about almost any of them for many reasons (i.e. systemd, dbus, proprietary software, personality differences, etc. etc.)
I'll just add that if you have time, set up several Linux and/or BSD OSes in VMs and take them each for a spin to find what suits you.
It's a good idea, and if you like the idea of setting up your computers by programming in Scheme, Guix will be right up your alley.
For an end-user machine, I've found that rolling release is much better than point release (much newer, less buggy/crashy -- paradoxically -- versions of software and GPU drivers). (Although, surprisingly, Fedora seems to have very fast package updates despite being a point release.) For rolling, Manjaro is my top pick. Arch is a close second, assuming you've mastered the arcane art of its installation.
You might be thinking, "But a fringe, rolling release distribution can't be as stable as Ubuntu, the de facto default point release distro that ostensibly claims 99% of Linux marketshare." You would be insane to not be thinking that. But I guess companies' potential for incompetence is even more insane since that's been the opposite of my experience. I've had less installation issues and crashes during daily use of Manjaro than on Ubuntu over the last few years, which really surprised me. It's like Ubuntu is decaying. Or maybe I just got bad RNG. Or maybe it's that program and DE devs are always working on the latest version of their software while older versions are an afterthought, so rolling distributions that keep you up to date with the latest versions seem stabler. :p
Personal machines (workstations or servers) are very different to those you'd use in industry. I'll only comment on personal machines. For home workstations, as an ex Ubuntu user, I like Manjaro (and the whole Arch ecosystem) A LOT . Fedora is pretty nice as a dev workstation also.
But it's still my favourite. All the power of Arch with none of the hassle.
For production, take a look at SUSE (3 production servers with no hiccups, good support and no particular weird design decisions), CentOS stream after RHEL debacle (have 1 deployment on client request, no complaints or production issues so far), and of course the good old Debian if you want familiar things with Ubuntu
For a desktop, I've had a wonderful experience with Fedora Workstation. They're up-to-date while remaining stable, have a policy of working with upstream, and don't do any real customization to KDE/GNOME. I am mildly peeved at the whole CentOS debacle but wouldn't mind running Fedora on a personal server.
Just use Rocky Linux or Alma Linux it’s basically what Cent was. Unless you’re running anything super insanely mission critical CentOS stream would still be fine for your uses, and if you need something THAT highly available support might be worth while anyways in an enterprise environment.
Look no further than Debian. After switching from Ubuntu I started to understand why people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty.
Look even further at Devuan, made by people who conder Debian as a bit dirty. (I use both as needed, I'm just riffing on your comment)
Distros with rolling releases seem to do much better.
Red Hat for enterprise use, Fedora for personal desktop use. One of the largest communities you’ll find. If you want Debian based maybe just straight Debian. The centos debacle was poorly handled but I think what red hat was /trying/ to do made sense. The community just wasn’t there to sustain it. Red Hat was paying to give away free RHEL basically lol. CentOS Stream should have just been called RHEL Stream. It’s bas…