You’re the second person to mention pop_os. I’ll have to do some more digging on that.
I swear the way linux distros are named never ceases to crack me up. It’s part of the reason I came here to ask. I have some experience with raspberry pi lite so that I have a place to mess around and learn, but aside from that there are so many distros that it’s hard to get direction. Most of what I know I pulled from distrochooser and some light googling. But it seems like everything is an ad so finding reliable info can be a journey.
At any rate thank you for adding to my list of research. I appreciate it greatly :)