I haven’t exactly decided on what distro for my server, but I have used forks/offshoots of debian, namely Raspbian or Raspberry Pi OS for my Pis. I understand the hurdles and such that come along with enterprise related products, as I am an IT professional by trade. I haven’t worked with RHEL or Oracle’s offerings yet.
I love Arch, but I too love linux. I never got into Gentoo, but I wanted to try it out just for the experience. I do get annoyed with having to compile everything from source with Arch on my laptop for exactly that reason; lap overheating. I also haven’t used Slackware, Mandrak/Mandriva, Tggdrassil, or SuSE but I have at least heard of them. And I absolutely love the conversation, mind wandering is alright by me!
The tough pill to swallow with linux for me has been the functionality gaps between different offerings, but I love the choices I am given.