Using an operating system you have to tinker with to get working right, and even fix when it breaks means you learn a lot about the low level of what an operating system is, and how this one does it. That information translates to being useful writing and fixing other software. The point is this, if you're a student, consider using something unusual that is more brittle. Maybe a sweet spot is running mainstream linux on your mainstream laptop (Lenovo T-series is one of the right answers there, dell is the wrong answer) and have a project using a pine rock64 SBC running linux to drive your tv screen or similar? Something that you want to use, that breaks at random in random places that you then have to investigate to work out how to fix.

You really learn something keeping brittle systems functional. Linux laptops with nvidia gfx cards definitely used to qualify in ways a t480s really doesn't nowadays.

When fixing things that break, strace, gdb, perf, ftrace, BPF, write or fix a kernel device driver, understand what the OS and compiler don't do for you, what they often will do for you that maybe you don't want them to.