Oddly enough, it wasn’t that it felt weird to me (it did but I figured that was just the switch to Linux), it was that the immutability wouldn’t let me change the login screen background, lol. After a few days googling and trying to hack it, I gave up and switched to a distro that didn’t have that locked down.
After I switched I realized that Garuda felt better to me overall too, but the vibe of an OS is a hard thing to measure until you feel the difference.
I’ve enjoyed Hiking Project, but my needs are pretty simple and don’t know if it has the features you are looking for