Imo package managers/repos, update cycles, and installation process can still be a reasonable differentiator between distros. Admittedly these decisions are fairly minor -- most popular packages are available on the major repos and you probably aren't installing your distro every day. But even though most the time I'm just living in nvim and Firefox, if adding or changing something becomes a chore it can really expand quickly as I might avoid making a positive change to my system just because I can't overcome the initial inertia from having to bend my distro to my will. Then again, that's probably a sign that I should swallow my pride and switch from Arch to Manjaro at some point.