I was kind of expecting something like that. If I wanted to do the test, would I just set the wan side of my firewall to dynamic and see if it picks up an address?

Yeah I have at&t and currently using bridge mode, but I want to rip out their device completely if possible

From a new users perspective, a lot of the main ones will probably feel very similar and the main difference you’d notice is stability and compatibility. Don’t overwhelm yourself with choices, just choose a easy to use, high user base, well supported distro to start on (Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint) and if you don’t like it move to something else later