Different distros have different limitations and advantages but there are usually good reasons for these things. For example, Debian strives for stability, but that also means fairly old packages. Some other distro might not have a very wide selection of apps in the repos, but it might have some other areas where it excels. As long as you agree with these sorts of design decisions, it should be a good distro for you.

You don’t even have to like the default DE or any other package related decision that comes with the default image. Maybe there’s a bare bones image that allows you to build your OS which ever way you like, and install only the packages you really need. in this regard, every distribution can be made more or less similar, but your decisions won’t change what is or isn’t in the repositories or how the devs make their decisions.

For a lot of people, the default image is the one they’ll use. In that regard, every distribution is different, but can still be made similar if you put the time and effort into it. Some people prefer to have this and that preinstalled, while other people want something else to work out of the box. With these sorts of decisions in mind, there are huge differences between distros.