If you're not using a standard DE (Gnome, KDE,...) but rather something like i3, Hyprland,... then I highly recommend starting with home-manager on whatever distro you're currently on. Once you're happy with that setup, it's really easy to add the "rest of the system" without risking a giant headache because your desktop still needs to be configured
Don't make a mistake in choosing a distro ( lemmy.world )