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
It uses the Linux kernel yes but not what OP is asking at all