AntiX is fun

I went with fedora bluefin.

It's an atomic/immutable type OS, based on silverblue, but with a bunch of drivers and software bundled in.

Atomic is not for everyone, but I love it. I tried it on a whim when I got my framework 13 over a year ago, and it's been on there ever since.

I've been using Linux on and off for a couple of decades now, mostly Ubuntu, but some others (OG DSL anyone?).

Really though I've never been able to ditch windows until bluefin. My problem has always been that after a year or two, my system starts to get unstable. And you can forget about complete version upgrades. Out of the question. They never fail to always fail. I just can't stop tinkering with things.

But bluefin? It has everything I want and need in a daily driver. And it's very nature FORCES me to not tinker with the inner gubbins. Thusly, it just works. Every day. Every update. Solid.

I use distrobox for tinkering. Or I spin up a Windows VM in proxmox if I need to get crazy. And I've still got a Windows computer gathering dust in the corner for when Windows on metal is required, but that's only happened once since I started this party.

So yeah, if you haven't given it a try, I highly recommend it.

PikaOS has been decent.

Debian with newer packages and CachyOS-style optimisations baked in.

Upstream or Mint. Meaning Fedora or Mint, since you ruled out Debian and Arch.

This is blog post is several years old now, but the points to consider when choosing a distro are still quite relevant.

Choosing Your Desktop Linux Distribution

TL;DR - Probably Fedora Workstation

Personally, I can't stand using anything but GNOME on a laptop (the touchpad experience on GNOME is much better than KDE), so my personal recommend would have to be something like Fedora Workstation. I find the ~6 month version release cycle very nice, it's a good balance between rolling and stable.

Debian XFCE

once you pass the 4 gig of ram mark, all of the distros become usable for you, so -- in your shoes -- i would decide what's the most important things you need.

for me, it's a distro that doesn't require to me to upgrade beyond the using package/kernel updates and that's something like debian where i can stick is a release for a really long time w/o having to reinstall when the next version is released.

most distros seem to a have a migration path, but it's rare to find one that doesn't have any hiccups.

Devuan if you want something solid and boring. Gentoo if you feel adventures and want something that's fun and solid!

Not a recommendation but this is currently a Linux Mint Debian Edition household for the most part. Just never had a reason to swap yet, I'm sure there will be. Careful with the wifi cards look up your specific model. As long as it has an ethernet cable you shouldn't have to worry tho

I use Aurora, done by the same guys who make Bazzite (de facto PC gaming distro) Aurora is immutable, a flavor of Fedora, meant as a general purpose workstation. It comes with KDE, but UniversalBlue has some distros with other DE's built in, as your post suggests you don't like KDE

I had tried Manjaro before that, but I kept messing up the network drivers somehow. Thus, I looked for immutable distros that are harder for me to break. If you're not as reckless as me, Manjaro might do you good?

CachyOS is pretty popular right now :)

Try alma

Do you want to actually have a rock solid (albeit, boring) computing experience? Mint or Debian (I know you said no Debian but everyone always come back to the big D eventually)

Do you want a neat flavor-of-the month distro that you'll tinker with for a while and ultimately move on from? Void is pretty cool

Honorable mention: NixOS. It's different but when it clicks for people, they never use anything else

MX Linux

All of them. Put home in a separate partition and just rename /home/kiol to /home/kiol2 before installing the next one and be careful not to format that partition. Also keep a space separated text list of all of your needed programs to paste into whatever package manager command in a file somewhere in your home dir. Go into distrowatch and try the most niche ones nobody has ever heard about too. Become THE distro hopper.

I bought an old laptop to install libreboot on and I've been messing with Gentoo. I see the appeal now that I've tried it. It took me a couple days to compile librewolf but assuming your laptop isnt from 2013 I imagine things would build a lot faster for you

If you want a real adventure, try out Qubes.

I suggest Void Linux and putting Niri + noctalia-shell on it.

I have a Lenovo Flex 2 15, which has an i3, 1080p display with intel graphics (although it's a 15" display) and upgraded to 16 GB of RAM

I use AntiX/MX Linux bc they're made with lower spec/older systems in mind. I started with AntiX-core to keep everything as lightweight (not a ton of background processes = low memory usage, low cpu usage) as possible

I use Sway bc 1. It's more lightweight than a full DE, and 2. Keyboard navigation is a must for laptops (trackpads only exist to inflict pain and misery on the world)

A couple great things about this setup is that it rarely overheats (as long as I keep it to a couple tasks at a time), and the battery can last for a 2 hours if I forget to plug it in

Even if you don't end up going with any of these suggestions, please take this to heart: never stop tweaking your system. You end up learning so much about it, and every little change makes it feel all that much more special to you