Debian! As far as hardware you’d probably have an easier time with an AMD GPU but otherwise most everything works. Get intel wifi if you can/want wifi.
not really unless you’re trying something relatively unique like nixos or void etc. you can do most things on any distro
Jellyfin does books but its a little wonky right now from.my experience
Framework would be my first choice if I could afford it. Grab yourself an amd thinkpad from ebay
We always knew this would happen though.
It uses the Linux kernel yes but not what OP is asking at all