The vast majority of desktop users don't give two flips about security, nor freedom, they don't even know what those things are and don't care to be informed.
I've even seen a few (on reddit) asking for Linux to support giving kernel level permissions to applications, so they can play a few videogames, they are fine with having rootkits on their PC, that's the level of "care" they have.
But that's ok, Linux is already a de-facto "monopoly" on the server side, the most important one, it doesn't need to win over also desktops.
Unfortunately I believe Apple hardware is unsurpassed when it comes to solid builds, care into details, functionalities and beautiful appearances.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years, never had problems making my desktops look good and work fine with the right cases and components, but laptops? meh
Only once in 20 years I found one that I like aesthetically and has all the compatible hardware (full Intel only), I got it at half the price because they weren't making it anymore...
The details of origin and motives of the attack, along with mitigation tactics, are, understandably, being kept under wraps while the investigation continues
I hope they'll disclose at least the origin, and what they think their reasons are, when it's over.
What you say is especially true for laptops, those have the highest chance of having weird non-standard components that give a lot of problems on Linux.
Much easier on desktops, especially if you build your own, you get to choose which components go into it.
Nvidia is shit on laptops but it's fine on desktops.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years, always had Nvidia on my self-built desktops, my experience has always been flawless, I just have to install proprietary drivers.
My experience with laptops has been hit and miss, until I learned to buy laptops "full Intel only", on those everything works out of the box.
The problem with Microsoft is they always try to cater to the absolute lowest denominator when it comes to users, I understand why they do it, because there are indeed some people that shouldn't look at a computer even with a binocular, but I don't agree with their approach nonetheless.
Being treated like a moron by an OS infuriates me and that's why I switched to Linux many years ago.
you'll be able to speak to your computer while you're writing, inking, or interacting with another person. You should be able to have a computer semantically understand your intent to interact with it
First thing to consider is they all use the same Desktop Environments.
Unlike Windows, in Linux the "graphic" is completely separated from the operating system, any DE can be uses on any distro, so trying different distros that come with the same DE, might make you think there's very little difference (at first look).
Second, almost all distros are derivatives, that contributes to make them feel similar. The original ones are just a bunch: Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSe, Arch, Gentoo, everything else is based either on one of those or on another derivative, if your curious you can have a look at this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg.So for example, if you take Ubuntu and Mint, they might look similar because Mint is based on Ubuntu.
If you want to see the real differences, you need to look at the original ones, the core differences are: the way software is packaged and managed, and the "philosophy" behind the way the system is overall administered, maintained and released.
Derivatives add differences to the user experience, they main reason they're created is someone is not completely happy with the way a distro does things and they create one the meets their needs, for example, Debian is improved dramatically on the user experience lately, but many years ago was quite arduous to setup and use for non-experts, so Ubuntu was born.
Now to answer you question
as long as I choose one that gets regular updates, it doesn’t matter fundamentally?
It does matter, tho it's not as much world-changing as some people seem to think (especially when it comes to gaming).
The most important things are support for your hardware and easy of administration/use. Most distros will recognize and setup your hardware out of the box, but some might require tinkering or extra steps. Some distros automate almost everything so the user doesn't need to think about it, others require more knowledge and more manual intervention, you have a much finer control of your system this way at the expense of some user friendliness, it's up to you to decide what you prefer.
Then it comes the Desktop Environment, different DEs do things differently, which one to choose is totally personal preference.
As for software, unless you go after some niche obscure distro, you shouldn't have problems finding it in the distro repositories. For edge cases you can always use Flatpaks or AppImages.
So "AI powered" ads? Integrated into gaming? Players caring about performance will be so happy about that ...
Glad I'm not using any of their crap.