Unfortunately, all the "distro picker" resources I have seen so far are of questionable quality. They either are too opinionated (use my favorite distro) or not

Unfortunately, all the "distro picker" resources I have seen so far are of questionable quality. They either are too opinionated (use my favorite distro) or not opinionated enough (listing super niche distros for no good reason). That said, I agree with what jononor said. Using something similar that what your most helpful Linux-using friend uses trumps picking the most ideal distro and as long as you pick something relatively mainstream there isn't going to be that big of a difference anyway. In my experience, the choice of desktop environment (GNOME / KDE / MATE / etc) is actually more impactful than the choice of distro.