Debian or Fedora are the most popular and therefore your safest and easiest options. Debian is slightly more common and therefore most tutorials and guides will be for Debian if they only have documentation for one distribution. Debian is also slightly more stable than Fedora since the packages are older and better tested, but I have never had a problem with Fedora breaking.

If you want to have the latest version of new software faster go with Fedora, if you want the easiest mainstream experience (the path of least resistance) go with Debian. But don't overthink, both are great options you can't go wrong with as long as you don't fall down the rabbit hole of endless customization.

I have been using Linux for 15 years and have never had to do this. As long as you choose a mature, stable distro (not arch or the newest fad) you will have a much easier time.

Just because something might be hard means we should give up before even trying?

The same thing can be true about variable names, and it is often more time consuming and error prone to change a variable name to match its new meaning than to simply update a comment. Especially if the variable name is public facing through an API or library then there is a huge cost to change the name everywhere that might reference it.

"The only art form that Americans have invented, that will commend us down through the years to posterity, is a music born primarily in a community that has the historical memory of being unfree is a supposedly free land" - Ken Burns