For computer vision and ML work specifically, RHEL doesn't give you much advantage over Ubuntu or even Fedora for personal use. Most ML tooling like PyTorch, CUDA drivers, Jupyter is better supported and easier to set up on Ubuntu, and the community resources are much larger.

if you want something RHEL-adjacent without the overhead, Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux give you the same base for free and are worth a look.

Not really.

CV/ML takes a lot of resources, so If you wanted to have an advantage by choosing a certain linux distro, I'd suggest one that sets up a super minimal system.

In reality, choose any distro. Want suggestions? Then perhaps linux mint If you are new to linux.

I have been using debian and ubuntu together on different systems, and I wanted to know if I can do things more efficiently, ubuntu distro bloat is real, but when I try to use Debian, it is coming from behind on drivers and packages. I appreciate any suggestions.