As you said here a lot of people here either like to downplay the differences between the distros or use them in a way that makes them not notice those differences.
I'm with them in saying that if you plan to distro-hop just to change the DE you should probably learn how linux works, but there are definitely differences.
Some examples:
If you want to run ROS2 then ONLY supported distro is Ubuntu
Before choosing a distro which has systemd removed (like Artix) you should definitely make sure what you are doing, there are definitely differences here
The frequency of updates of packages is an important thing. Last year it was almost impossible to install Hyprland because it used packages that were too new
As you said here a lot of people here either like to downplay the differences between the distros or use them in a way that makes them not notice those differences. I'm with them in saying that if you plan to distro-hop just to change the DE you should probably learn how linux works, but there are definitely differences. Some examples: