If you want to get real fancy with it you could do something like Nix, but honestly I would recommend Debian first almost every time

“You wouldn’t ask to put age verification on a Bible would you mister representative?”

Echo people saying go to a common starter distro instead of a more esoteric one. Another starter tip if you want to learn the ecosystem deeply is to find good sources of documentation.

The man command is always useful, but for more general topics you can start looking with your distros help pages -> package documentation -> Alternate distro wiki. Essentially start with the documentation most relevant to your setup, which will often be your distros own guides. If your answer isn’t there you can check upstream with the packages themselves. Many have github/sourceforge pages with good info. If you still can’t find your answers several distros have documentation pages that are really really useful even when you’re on different distros. The Arch wiki is for me the defining feature of the distro, and almost any answer to a Linux question can be found between the Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Wiki if you read closely.

Not certain this is your issue, but there are multiple different protocols that support Bluetooth audio. The first is A2DP, where the phones audio is sent to a speaker or other device as an audio sink. This is what is mostly used for multimedia. The other that could be the issue is HFP which is the protocol mostly used for headsets with microphones. Its been a long time since I’ve worked on Bluetooth, but I have faint memories of having similar issues when the Hands Free Profile was selected instead of A2DP to manage the connection.

I think mostly they just optimized load times in general, so the difference is a bit less stark

Solid state used to be basically required for Total War so the map loads would be quick. Still quicker but not as essential anymore