The key to such heavy customisation in Linux is using a different window manager. The distributions you listed all come with big name ones like GNOME or KDE which are awesome to get started with Linux. OP uses sway so have a look at that. It’s a lot of work to set things up if you go down that path. Make sure you don’t make things so hard on yourself that you end up going back to Windows.

While I like this suggestion I’d be careful if you’re just getting started: you don’t want to end up losing data if this is your only copy. Make sure to have proper backups if you have data you can’t afford to lose. You could even encrypt it and upload it to Dropbox/google drive