Most distros are running the same software. The biggest difference is your package manager & community. Personal preference is NixOS but that ain’t beginner-friendly even if the rollbacks from bad states would help. Arch isn’t as difficult to set up as it used to be & has been more stable than a lot of distros in my experience so I wouldn’t discount it but .pacnew files can bite you if modifying in /etc instead of in the home folder (when possible). Of the things folks normally suggest as a first go, Fedora would probably be my pick (not yet had a problem) as everything Ubuntu-based still rubs me wrong for support & leadership.
I actually disagree on what the biggest difference is. For the average everyday user, the biggest difference is the desktop environment. Having a desktop environment that the user finds intuitive, easy, and is stable is by far the most important thing.
That’s what a lot of folks might see, but almost every distro can install any desktop environment + window manager combo with the exact settings of the other distros. I’m happy some distros are theming/reskinning the env to look unique, but ultimately it’s just a coat of paint that you can slap on any distro & shouldn’t be a reason for picking a distro… but could be a reason to decide on which DE+WM you would like to run.
Most distros are running the same software. The biggest difference is your package manager & community. Personal preference is NixOS but that ain’t beginner-friendly even if the rollbacks from bad states would help. Arch isn’t as difficult to set up as it used to be & has been more stable than a lot of distros in my experience so I wouldn’t discount it but
.pacnewfiles can bite you if modifying in/etcinstead of in the home folder (when possible). Of the things folks normally suggest as a first go, Fedora would probably be my pick (not yet had a problem) as everything Ubuntu-based still rubs me wrong for support & leadership.I actually disagree on what the biggest difference is. For the average everyday user, the biggest difference is the desktop environment. Having a desktop environment that the user finds intuitive, easy, and is stable is by far the most important thing.
That’s what a lot of folks might see, but almost every distro can install any desktop environment + window manager combo with the exact settings of the other distros. I’m happy some distros are theming/reskinning the env to look unique, but ultimately it’s just a coat of paint that you can slap on any distro & shouldn’t be a reason for picking a distro… but could be a reason to decide on which DE+WM you would like to run.