> If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll switch

I find Niri to be a great WM for trackpad use if you are amenable to a scrollable-tiling workflow. All gestures are inertial like MacOS and to my fingers they often feel snappier and more natural than their macOS equivalents. Scrolling is consistent and natural, though which apps have inertial scrolling is definitely hit-or-miss. It perfectly recognizes three and four finger gestures. PikaOS (debian-based) and CachyOS (arch-based) both offer Niri as an option if you want to give it a try.

For context, my experience is on a 4 year old thinkpad which admittedly is probably best case for driver support but is definitely not the best touchpad hardware on the market.

Thanks for the recommendation! I've been playing around with Niri for the past hour and I have to say there's a lot here that I like. I'm still going to need to figure out how to adjust the trackpad gesture sensitivity a bit (which doesn't seem especially straightforward to do) - but this is considerably more buttery than anything I've experienced before on Linux