I recently distro-hoped to Fedora Silverblue and I am quite pleased with it. This version has in immutable filesystem, thus you might want to look for another version of Fedora.
NixOS is big no go for me too, especially given that you can install the Nix package manager on any distro easily.
Arch Wiki is great and I often use it for non Arch distros well.
Somehow I found ways to remove and break the GUI multiple times in multiple ways in multiple distros.
Different scenarios, different times, different issues trying to "fix". My usual fix after this was always to copy what I think I still had important and then move on with a reinstall.
Recently I have been playing with ZorinOS and broke it in the same way by fidgeting with pipewire. Distro hoped to Fedora Silverblue due to the immutable filesystem. I wonder if I will break this one in a way I cannot revert it easily with rpm-ostree. I almost feel challenged.