Interesting take. To me it seems like a big leap. Take it from a serial Linux dabbler, about once a year I download 10-20 of the top Linux distros and try them all. I download them on my main machine, which is Windows, and copy them all to USB sticks and try them one by one. If someone is only looking at metrics, 20 people just switched to Linux!
If you’re keen on dabbling, focusing on one and making it your own is a great way to go. You might find that the distro was standing in your way when you start from something more bare metal.
The problem is once you go off the distro's beaten path you quickly find yourself forking things like package managers to add features you want. I guess I could pick one and become a contributor... but I really don't have time so... dabbler I remain.
I do everything on bare metal, but if a distro doesn't work very well "live" by booting to its USB stick, I'm not very likely to install it as an actual inhabitant of a particular PC, whether desktop or laptop.
