One important thing you need to know about distros: they’re all the same under the hood.
You can have any desktop you want on any distro. But some customizations are redone in some distros. In terms of programs you want to run, they pretty much all work on any distro. If a distro is “better for gaming” it usually just means the programs are pre-installed.
People talk about arch and Debian as the best because they have the least customizations, allowing you to install and customize as you wish.
Linux users are mostly tinkerers, they like their customizations their way. I’m in that boat. The less I have to remove to get my customization working, the better. Just give me a black screen and a white blinking cursor, I know how to do the rest from there.