Check out using ddns. It’s not perfect, but works. There are updater containers you can run. NoIP used to have freebie domains, I bought a domain a while back, then switched to cloudflare for convenience despite it being cloudflare (you can leave tell them not to use their proxy for individual sub-domains). Bonus points for using something like nginx proxy manager or cert-manager to handle acme LetsEncrypt certs, because unencrypted http is BAD.

Unique? Personal favorite of mine: https://dyne.org/dynebolic/

Personally, my “I’m too lazy to build this from the ground up” daily driver is cachyos now…used to be Manjaro or Garuda, but I feel like cachy does the same stuff with less bloat.

When I feel picky and want to spend the time, void is my goto. Xbps is a fantastic package manager. Nix is worth running as a daily driver once (although guix sounds REAL interesting), but it’s not for folks who want to avoid a steep learning curve. If you want something more gentoo-flavored, sabayon is gentoo for the lazy (and it bundles a binary package manager for those who are impatient xD ).

I know one guy who daily drove tinycore for a while. Same with puppy Linux. I couldn’t get into beyond the occasional live boot.

Not exactly what you’re asking for, but have you considered something like this?

https://github.com/Guake/guake

Press a button, terminal drops down. Press it again and it rolls back up to the top out of sight. It’s based on how the console worked on Quake. I haven’t used it in a while, but my guess is that depending on what tiling WM you’re using you’ll get different levels of weird interactions with window geometry.