I've been very happy on Fedora. It's been reliable and has up to date software and kernels.

Whoa this is cool, but I'm finding the voice to text to be quite buggy. Sometimes it works and other times all I get a bunch of emojis and weird symbols??

I learned early on you can't rely on them for factual information for reasons you stated.

I use them for creative writing tasks (drafting up emails, letters, etc), generating ideas, for creating excel formulas, basic python, vba functions, etc.

I assume you're talking about the one found in samsung phones. It's basically like a launcher with shortcuts to apps you can access from any screen without having to go back to home or the app tray. Personally I found it to be too much also, not very customizable and inefficient use of space with only a few apps showing up there. It can be disabled in settings.

I like the idea though. I use the one handed+ module in goodlock where I can set another more compact app launcher when I diagonally swipe down from anywhere along the right edge screen. I have other shortcuts set to other gestures. It's handy for multitasking.