My journey went Ubuntu (2012) -> Kubuntu (2018) -> Manjaro (2020) -> Fedora KDE (2022)
Most computers I had were used and low-end so Linux was always my preferred OS, but I always dualbooted with the version of Windows or MacOS the machine came with when I could.
My current computers have been Linux only for a couple years now, thanks to Windows being a headache and MacOS being inflexible.
In my experience, gaming distros primary benefit is being preconfigured with apps and patches you’d install on a normal distro.
For normal distros, this difference isn’t big enough to impact your distro choice in most cases. The reason these get recommended is due to their post-install setup being easier than the distro its based on, hence being friendlier to new Linux users.
However, for immutable distros this is a big factor as it reduces the need for layering. Layering makes updating much slower, so less is always better.