One thing to note on your first point: Generally speaking, the only time that equity loss doesn’t make a difference is if there is no mortgage. If you do have a mortgage; When housing prices are stagnate or increase, you can sell your home for a similar one with little to no loss (the buyer of your house effectively pays off your old mortgage and you roll your equity into your new mortgage).

BUT, if prices tank while you still have a significant portion of your mortgage owed: you’re screwed when you need to relocate. The sell price of your house won’t cover the reminder of the mortgage. If you need to move, you either pay it off (hope you don’t need to move for work) or foreclose. The bank is cool with either - they couldn’t care less about you.

Edit: Clarity and typos.

Do you want to actually have a rock solid (albeit, boring) computing experience? Mint or Debian (I know you said no Debian but everyone always come back to the big D eventually)

Do you want a neat flavor-of-the month distro that you’ll tinker with for a while and ultimately move on from? Void is pretty cool

Honorable mention: NixOS. It’s different but when it clicks for people, they never use anything else