to be honest, i agree with you. Although you can learn the same things through debian or ubuntu for example, their wikis are in no-way comparable to arch+gentoo. Having tried LFS, I think it is a great experience but definitely not something i could daily-drive. FreeBSD is something I have not tried; nixOS as well. I have used OpenBSD but it feels a bit slow compared to linux - at least as a desktop OS.

Every distribution offers different things. I like debian sid for the simplicity and general software availability, but APT is something i still consider a bit clunky. I like arch because of its barebones philosophy - arch wiki helped me a lot learn about linux. I like gentoo - the wiki is awesome and portage is a great package manager. It was the first time I saw how the linux kernel gets compiled. It makes you appreciate all the work the devs do. I now read the title and you ask for the opposite. But someone might find these bad, so i will post it as-is

systemd brings much functionality. It can’t follow unix philosophy because unix is 50 years old. the whole community drama about this systemd VS sysV VS OpenRC VS whatever comes up, is funny. There are distros that are systemd-free if you wish so much to avoid it.

Damn. It feels bad even though I never met this man in person. RIP legend!! :'(

I enjoy gnome with the arcMenu extension https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3628/arcmenu/ I will include usually some other extensions, but arcMenu is what makes the experience a lot better than the stock one for me.