DO NOT QUOTE ME ON THIS, but I might be mistaken, but having the drive be internal would help with random operations because the protocol is AHCI directly, but if it’s a hard drive, and given the use case, idk if it really matters. Using anything Ubuntu based probably supports hardware acceleration if what you said is true, so I’m guessing Zorin OS would be fine if you’re familiar with it (tho I personally don’t have the best experience with it)