I've used a lot of distros by now and I can say that I've figured out what I enjoy and what I don't.

First off, desktop environment: - I don't care if you like gnome, it felt and ran like shit for a desktop. I much prefer the simple design on a laptop. KDE is just better. Cosmic is pretty good too.

Next, base distro branch: - This was one where I didn't know if i would like rolling release, stability, or an in between. It turns out I liked updated software but I hated the instability. So I chose fedora.

Flatpak, snap, appimage or distro packages?: - Depends on the software i want. I don't care it snaps are bad if I want something and it runs better for a snap I will use that instead. Mainly flatpaks though.

Distro chosen: - Like I said earlier, I prefer stability with updates. I chose fedora bazzite as it's got that stability while being based off fedora. Absolutely helps with a lot of shit I found tedious about normal fedora such as waydroid and all that.