Given that they're all free, there's no reason you shouldn't try a few and see what you like
One thing you may not be aware of is that Ubuntu, Mint, Pear, CentOS, and many others, are all much the same under the hood. They're all based on Debian (other distros are available), but they differ by having different window managers and provide different utilities (and probably in level the of hardware detection and automatic driver installation they provide, perhaps).
So, you could install a straight Debian (or other) system and then try out different window managers and install the utilities you want. This is probably Doing It The Hard Way™, but it's also probably the most streamlined and flexible. (And if you want to learn, it's definitely the way to go.)
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