I work for a big enterprise, we have very strict policies when it comes to work PCs, no way anyone would be allowed to change the operating system.
BUT I got permission to install Virtualbox so I can happily use Linux for many things nonetheless.
First thing to consider is they all use the same Desktop Environments.
Unlike Windows, in Linux the “graphic” is completely separated from the operating system, any DE can be uses on any distro, so trying different distros that come with the same DE, might make you think there’s very little difference (at first look).
Second, almost all distros are derivatives, that contributes to make them feel similar. The original ones are just a bunch: Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSe, Arch, Gentoo, everything else is based either on one of those or on another derivative, if your curious you can have a look at this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg.
So for example, if you take Ubuntu and Mint, they might look similar because Mint is based on Ubuntu.
If you want to see the real differences, you need to look at the original ones, the core differences are: the way software is packaged and managed, and the “philosophy” behind the way the system is overall administered, maintained and released.
Derivatives add differences to the user experience, they main reason they’re created is someone is not completely happy with the way a distro does things and they create one the meets their needs, for example, Debian is improved dramatically on the user experience lately, but many years ago was quite arduous to setup and use for non-experts, so Ubuntu was born.
Now to answer you question
as long as I choose one that gets regular updates, it doesn’t matter fundamentally?
It does matter, tho it’s not as much world-changing as some people seem to think (especially when it comes to gaming).
The most important things are support for your hardware and easy of administration/use. Most distros will recognize and setup your hardware out of the box, but some might require tinkering or extra steps. Some distros automate almost everything so the user doesn’t need to think about it, others require more knowledge and more manual intervention, you have a much finer control of your system this way at the expense of some user friendliness, it’s up to you to decide what you prefer.
Then it comes the Desktop Environment, different DEs do things differently, which one to choose is totally personal preference.
As for software, unless you go after some niche obscure distro, you shouldn’t have problems finding it in the distro repositories. For edge cases you can always use Flatpaks or AppImages.
I’ve been using it for a few years on my gaming desktop and I couldn’t be happier about it, it’s the distro that stopped my distro-hopping.
most mods dont work on linux
Mods work just fine, it’s mod managers that sometimes don’t work.
If mods don’t have manual setup instructions, I install them on Windows, copy back to Linux the mod config file and happily play on Linux.
I noticed that too.
I did it manually, deleted the old list file, it works fine.