After having tried many distros, I settled on Fedora. It’s a boring choice, but it has been a great experience for me. Everything pretty much works without issue, and the OS gets out of the way for me to do my work.

I also think that having a trustworthy company and team behind it matters. It’s hard to trust some obscure distro to provide proper support, security updates, and proper testing.

Also, while I enjoy tinkering and messing around, my main OS is not one of the thinks I would want to tinker with. I have work to do, and I need a stable platform i can rely on.

NixOS is a bad choice for a new user. EndeavourOS is okay, but arch-based distros (even ones with nice graphical installers) can get overwhelming for a beginner if an update breaks something and you have to figure out why and fix it, which isn’t an irregular occurence for me. Wouldn’t recommend tumbleweed for similar reasons.

I think the best mix of easy customizability, beginner-friendliness, and stability are probably offered by fedora and mint, personally.

One I haven’t seen here is Arco Linux. It’s designed as a kind of learning path from getting to know basic Linux concepts to being able to install Arch on your own, so I think it’s a pretty good early choice, tho probably not that good for the first choice.

General recommendation is that you choose something with good community support or at least good documentation. You might also not want a rolling release, because they tend to be more on the unstable side.

I was in a similar situation; I was a windows power user and I jumped straight into nixos. I do not recommend it for someone completely new to linux.

Having to deal with new concepts and confusing terminology like window/display/login managers, a new file system, bash, desktop environments, etc., and then having to learn nix (my first dive into a functional language), nixpkgs, NixOS, AND all the noise surrounding flakes was incredibly frustrating. After a week I gave up and jumped ship.

I played around with void linux for a bit (followed jake@linux’s playlist on YT, it’s a fantastic guide), had a blast ricing my desktop, got comfortable running without a desktop environment, then went back to nix a month later. By that point I was familiar enough with linux and just had to learn the nix ecosystem (still difficult, but bearable).

Things started to click, especially once I had read the nix pills in its entirety. Now with my entire system configured with flakes I just can’t see myself ever going back :>

I never tried the beginner friendly distros like mint or ubuntu so I can’t comment on them, but I was really happy with void. Yes it’s doesn’t hold your hand, but it very quickly taught me a lot about how everything fits together. I’m sure arch provides a similar experience.

Have distro hopped over the years - most recently Manjaro to Fedora to Endeavour, but haven’t found the one that’s quite perfect for me.
That said, I’d make a few recommendations based on the person I’d be “marketing” to:

1. New to Linux, looking for polish: Mint
   Mint is built off the well-known Ubuntu, polished a step further. It’s in my experience the simplest to use and most generally polished of the Linux offerings. The community generally isn’t as catered to power users, but if you care more about your time than about customization, I’d recommend Mint.

2. Looking for Stable/Modern, willing to jump thru a few hoops: Fedora
   Fedora has come a long way over the years. It’s far more stable, polished, and accessible than ever before. I’d hazard to call it my top recommendation, BUT, third-party software management and installation can be something of a nightmare. COPR is approximately equivalent to the AUR of Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch below, but at this time very obtuse and difficult to learn or work with. Some day you’ll want a package that exists in COPR, and that day won’t be fun for you.

3. Need apps you can’t find anywhere else: Endeavour/Manjaro
   Forget bleeding-edge packages and rolling release - the Arch User Repository (AUR) is hands-down the greatest feature on offer from Arch-based distros. The AUR is a repository of packages created by users that aren’t supported by the main repos. If ever there’s a time you need a piece of software and you can’t find it anywhere else, the AUR’s your best bet.
   That said, I found/find both Manjaro and now Endeavour to be a little rough around the edges, and the consequence of rolling-release and bleeding-edge software is a system that isn’t always working just right.

4. Looking to learn, straight into the frying pan: Arch
   Same benefits and drawbacks of Endeavour/Manjaro above, but if you want to set up your system service-by-service, as lean as you want, Arch is there for you. A great experience if you just need an excuse to “try” putting an OS together piece by piece, even if you don’t ultimately keep it in the long run.

Desktop Environments
The great DE debate. Nobody can tell you what’s right and wrong here, but I have a few general breakdowns of the “big three”.
GNOME: If simplicity and elegance is your style. You sacrifice customization potential for cohesion and polish.
KDE: Modern. Powerful. Usually polished out the gate. Can be a bit much if you’re trying to tweak it tho. My personal choice.
XFCE: Less modern, more friendly to lower-end systems.

Whelp that’s it from me, hope it helps!

I know this thread is old, but let me add this to the conversation: Look into distrobox, it essentially allows you to use packages from any distro inside of your current one.

Warning: not space efficient

That said, this takes the question of “what packages do I want” out of the equation when choosing a distro

I’m going to suggest one I’m not seeing here; OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I cut my teeth on Tumbleweed for years, and it has the pros of a rolling release while YaST provides the tools needed to have a stable base that rivals that of Ubuntu. Gaming is extremely easy to get set up, and you can choose pretty much any major desktop, although I recommend XFCE.

Kubuntu or KDE Neon (also a 'buntu). I absolutely love KDE, and the Linux desktop experience in general has come a long, loooonnng ways in recent years.

I’ve recently switched to NixOS and I’m loving it. I’d say that it’s as much of a learning curve as Arch, but without the breakage when you screw something up.

You install all your packages and do all your configuration from the main config file. Should something somehow break you can simply switch to an older generation (a state of your computer, basically) and go on with your day. Also, if you configure something incorrectly it will warn you and refuse to apply it. You can even check the config file into git and keep track of your changes!

The new terminology can be pretty daunting, especially when people start talking about flakes. My suggestion is to simply avoid those until they’ve matured.

I can’t comment on it’s ability to game, but I’d definitely give it a try :D

Linux Mint is perfect! Avoid Ubuntu, which has a very shady history… Despite Mint being based on Ubuntu/Debian, it doesn’t have any spying software. Like Ubuntu used to send all the search queries to Ubuntu when you were searching locally on your system for a file or an image.