I am a very early Linux adopter (Red Hat Halloween) and I remember standing up my system piece by piece. It was fun back then but now I've got better things to do. Now I just install Pop!_OS and I am 98% of the way there.
If I was in my early twenties again, and trying to learn and tinker, then I would absolutely be running Arch or full FOSS Debian build. Either would be running only the absolute necessary software and nothing more. Just like I use to do it back in the day.