It really depends on your end goal I would say.

With a “bare” arch install you will probably learn the most (possibly the hard way). Also, arch being a rolling release, be prepared to update your system a lot, and fix problems as you go. That being said, I’ve been using the same arch install for a few years now and have had to fix stuff only once (Nvidia drivers, the usual culprit). If you want to try bleeding edge stuff, that would probably be the best option.

Nixos : same as you, tried, and left because the community couldn’t settle, and seemed to be fragmenting more and more. Also cool for bleeding edge stuff (thanks to the easy rollback)

You could also go for a debian based distro (debian or Ubuntu). My servers run on this, simply because they tend to require less maintenance.

There are also quite a few “docker-centric” distros, that can also be an option.

Whichever option you choose, if you use a lot of containers, mane sure to use something like docker compose, and keep your compose files safely somewhere (a git repository, a backup’d nas, …). You will keep a lot of nixos’s workflow goodness (everything is a config file), without some of the trouble.

IIRC zip can, but doesn’t by default. Source : wasted 8 hours trying to figure out why something didn’t work anymore (had to switch from tar to zip because stupid security system wouldn’t let me transfer the tar file)

Random idea that might work: Try to install ReFind from windows, it should work and allow you to boot from random thing more easily. Then try using it to boot from the SD card. Don’t forget to turn off secure boot. If that doesn’t work, the right idea is indeed to “burn” the media on a partition, however you will also encounter some amount of headache with this option: an installer is not a single partition, but multiple ones. You could try only having the “main” partition on disk, and use refind to boot it too.

TL;DR: ReFind could help you. Turn off secure boot.