Arch (based) - if you like to customize every detail of your OS
Nixos - if you like to customize every detail of your OS and you are tired of breaking your system constantly
PopOS - if you would like to stop customizing your system and want to get used to great defaults
Mint - you just want things to work
CachyOS or Bazzite - if you want to play games
To setup kubernetes inside lxc you have to enable quite some capabilities inside host kernel and lxd containers that can be used to escalate privileges from beeing root in container to root in proxmox. Not completely sure but since even containerd containers share the same kernel, attacker might escalate directly from pod to proxmox host. But this last par I am not sure about.
I just recently tried to setup k3s in proxmox LXC containers. I had to do everything again after I learned it was not possible to make this setup without comproimising security and isolation. Now I run kubernetes inside virtual machines in proxmox.
Are you sure your standards of beauty apply to most people? IMO macos design looks cheap compared to kde.
The main reason open source projects lack adoption is because there is no marketing or lobbying budgets.
Also you seem to be new here. No one cares about karma on Lemmy.
Imo you picked the ugliest distro. You can pick any distro with kde desktop environment. It looks good by default. https://kde.org Or I like the looks of Deepin.
I would not bother much about transphobia, because in every large enough forum you will find them sooner or later. I would report them and move on. I would go with Artix in your case and figure out the issue with NIC. Seems like the best option based on you requirements.