literally just use a normal distribution and 80% of your problems stop existing. anything not derived from Debian, Red Hat, or OpenSUSE is just a waste of your time.
I've used Ubuntu/Debian as a daily driver since I was like... ten?
I still don't really know how apt and dpkg work. I have no idea how to "use" systemd. PulseAudio/ALSA/JACK may as well be a black box to me. This has yet to be a real problem for me. I've never needed to intimately understand them. It just hasn't come up. They just work, or they don't work and you run apt -f install or log out and log in again and then they work again. it's fine. it's whatever. they just work. I feel like Linux doesn't get enough credit for that.
I'm a huge NixOS shill but I don't think it's use case is as a desktop operating system. It's much better suited as production operating system.