Well, as far as i have observed this (from safe distance, far, far away…) Andreas Kling rejected a proposal from a new contributor to change documentation to use gender neutral terms… and as usual with those things, people tend to get mad.

Yeah, he got a bit nuts over time… but i still watch him for his shit stirring and his ranting - but sometimes, even now, he still unearths really interesting bits like that one.

I would recommend either Debian or Devuan - both are absolutely rock stable and are a good entry level drug for the Debian based ecosystem. I personally like Devuan more (it just feels more mature and has more old mature community members).