There’s not any significant difference when it comes to Linux compatibility, I’ve had entirely fine experiences with both.

True, it’s easy to see why people call them that

“headless trashcan” is a rather beautiful combination of words

BunsenLabs itself was a distro that was supposed to be in the spirit of an older discontinued distro, CrunchBang. There was another distro inspired by CrunchBang, CrunchBang++. Not sure exactly how active CB++ is, but there is a version out based on Debian 12, and from what I remember they seem decent and keeping up with Debian at least.

I’ve never used Alpine as a daily driver, but it is nice. I always appreciate small and simple software.

From what I remember, AOSC OS is fairly easy to install, though it’s more niche, so I don’t know if I’d recommend it to a new user. There’s also Solus, I suppose, but while there is a new release out, I wouldn’t count on it remaining actively supported, given its track record. OpenMandriva and Mageia are worth noting, too. Their parent distro was corporate, but it doesn’t matter since its dead now. Not a lot else I can think of.

These days, Windows constantly gets in your way with ads, forced updates, crappy apps that install themselves, useless features like Cortana, forcing you to make a Microsoft account, etc. Linux or the BSDs, however, usually give you a bullshit-free and distraction-free experience. Plus, no spyware, completely free, endlessly customizable, and low resource usage (if you use a lightweight setup, but even “bloated” distros like Ubuntu and Mint are often light compared to Windows).

And what surprised me? I guess the only thing that surprised me is how easy the experience is, especially for things like gaming, which Linux has historically had a bad reputation for. Also, how nice it can be to use the terminal, not that you have to, especially as a novice user.