One was it being immutable, meaning for any software that wasn't in the flatpak store, I have to spin up a container running a mutable version and use that.

Sorry for being that guy, but please allow me to nitpick the above:

• Bazzite's founder and lead maintainer doesn't refer to Bazzite as immutable^[I'd argue it's their legit resistance against the common notion/understanding of immutability that doesn't apply to Bazzite.].
• Bazzite supports a lot more than just Flatpak and pet containers. And that list isn't even complete.

my only real point is that looking problems up on a small distro is harder

While I agree that Aurora definitely is a small 'distro'^[The uBlue team doesn't refer to their images as such 😅. Frankly, I agree that the daily pipeline their images go through to deliver system updates screams everything but the traditional model. To be clear, in uBlue's model, the daily-delivered base system is rebuilt from source every single time. So, my base system of Bazzite is identical to yours (unless either one of us created their own image).], I'm not comfortable to refer to Bazzite as a small project. Both Steam's own metrics as well as ProtonDB's suggest that it holds a moderate chunk. Sure, with just over 25k users it isn't quite comparable to (say) Fedora's 300k+ user base. But it definitely ain't a slouch either.

As for the looking problems up part, honestly, if a quick search doesn't help ya, you should just go over to their Discord or Discourse and ask the friendly maintainers and community for help/support. ~~Heck, even their subreddit seems to be doing a commendable job.~~

but I guess its a rather small distro that not many people know?

It's true that it's not as well-established as many of the other distros discussed here; it probably has like 1k users or so. Which is quite literally just a small fraction of Fedora KDE's over a 120k user base. Granted, it's a relatively new distro built on Fedora's latest/'future' tech. Usage numbers should follow eventually^[Based on Fedora's (current) intentions to default to said latest/'future' tech when the time is right.].

Thankfully, that same tech enables Aurora (and other projects like it) to be very robust and reliable; tangibly more so than the more popular 'traditional' alternatives. I assume you'll come to cherish and value this reliability, especially as stability seems to be a concern of yours.

This was originally intended as a longer comment, but the previous draft unfortunately blinked out of existence... Though, I'm more than willing to shed some light on the distros discussed below if you're interested.

Or any other Good KDE Distros out there.

I'm surprised that no one else has mentioned them yet. Thus, for the sake of completeness, consider Aurora and Bazzite. It's what I would personally install/recommend for/to relatives/friends that would like to make the switch to Linux.

The arch maintainers package more software than most other distributions.

Sorry, but I fail to see this.

I suppose if you're accounting literally all independent distros, then you're probably right. However, if we'd be more realistic and compare it to other well-established independent distros^[I'm basically counting Alpine, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, Slackware, Solus and Void. I didn't count Guix System and NixOS for how their 'repositories' are built different and therefore not easily comparable to the others.], then we notice that the vastness of the packages found in Arch's repository is rather lackluster at the very least. Heck, by virtually all metrics, Arch together with its derivatives undoubtedly belong in the upper echelons of usage stats; only being second to the Debian-family of distros. IMO, however, the size of its repository absolutely doesn't reflect this; as it's only bigger than Slackware, Solus and Void. The inclusion of these smaller projects is arguably charitable on my side*. But to drive the point home very clearly: Arch's repository is smaller than Alpine's, Debian's, Fedora's, openSUSE's and Gentoo's with a ratio of (about) two to one (except for openSUSE).

Because, and I quote:

"Warning: AUR packages are user-produced content. These PKGBUILDs are completely unofficial and have not been thoroughly vetted. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk."

Thankfully, there's a mailing list that covers issues like these. Heck, OP's PSA was probably originally propagated from there.

I use secureblue, because it offers the (AFAIK unique) intersection between:

• a security-first^[To be precise, it's actually Linux-first and security-second. For an actual security-first approach, consider taking a look at Sculpt OS employed with the seL4 kernel run on ARM or 64-bit RISC-V.] approach while being fit for general computing
• a first-class citizen of the ~~'immutable'~~ reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis paradigm
• a well-maintained project with many active contributors that exhibit a proactive stance when it comes to implementing (security) improvements

Thanks for reporting back!

Pretty good so far

Glad to hear that it has been a pleasant experience overall!

few things took a while to figure out ...

The "force me to enter a password any time I open my browser"-thing seems like unintended behavior. Pretty strange. Glad to hear that it has been resolved, though.

sadly still one thing I probably won’t ever be able to fix is getting a program (combat mode for GW2) to actually work as it’s… like 13 years old and just lets me press a button to make my mouse left/right click into keys while the game is up. They have integrated the other functionality of it at least so it’s not THAT bad. Might be able to get my mouse to manually do that if I check out the drivers for it I think someone made.

Perhaps you've already undertaken what I'm about to say, so please feel free to ignore this if that's the case: Have you reached out to their Discord server in hopes of resolving the issue? While their documentation is pretty great, it's possible that it ain't sufficient. Whenever that happens, the Discord community can (and probably will (at least in my experience)) step up and provide excellent guidance when prompted.

Honestly, Bazzite seems to fit like a glove:

• RTX 3070Ti

Nvidia can be an ass to work with on a lot of distros, but Bazzite delivers the right drivers OOTB.

Needs:

• Gaming

Bazzite is setup for gaming OOTB; it's bundled with Steam and Lutris, makes use of custom kernels/schedulers to optimize performance for gaming and contains many other goodies like excellent controller/peripheral support.

• Coding (Mostly python)

Provides a specialized DX (i.e. Developer Experience) image that comes with all the goodies you might expect.

• Video editing

Has a built-in just script that downloads, installs and sets up Davinci Resolve for ya: ujust install-resolve

• Music composing

This is the only I'm not 100% sure yet because you haven't provided explicitly yet what you'd like to use. But, I can't image it would be harder to get this running on Bazzite compared to other distros.

And last, but not least:

I'd like my main recreational machine & distro to be low maintenance

Through utilizing the bootc model, Bazzite is as low maintenance as they come.

It has been my pleasure fam! Enjoy your ride on Bazzite and please consider reporting back on how it went 😉.

I get the impression you've been enticed/subjected to some confusing technical jargon without noticing. Please allow me to shed some light.

Idk, there so much “mint and Debian are stable” but like… what’s the even mean?

Stable can mean a bunch of different stuff that may or may not be closely related. In the case of Debian, it's the name of its default release; the one in which packages are frozen for two years except for security patches. (Note that this naming scheme is not unique to Debian.) As such, a Debian installation will be unchanging for these two years, earning its stable designation (which, to be clear, just meaning unchanging in this context). Finally, this unchanging environment should provide a ton of stability (i.e. stuff just works), which is also referred to as stable. These three distinct meanings of stable are probably the ones you'll come across the most.

Is fedora 42 or bazzite going to be crashing regularly? Cuz… I doubt it?

The bold part is a clear demonstration that you understood stable to mean strictly robust; i.e. the third meaning discussed above. And to be clear, Fedora does a decent job at providing a reliable experience. (Bazzite even more so.) But not all three meanings of stable apply to it:

• For Fedora (and thus Bazzite by extension), the only stable repository is the one used to create its ISOs (i.e. the images used for installation). Beyond this, some packages are frozen within a release/version; e.g. you'll never get a major release update for GNOME unless you do a major release update for Fedora. But..., that's basically it; (almost) all other packages receive regular updates. As such, Fedora is often referred to as a semi-rolling release distro instead (as opposed to Debian being referred to as a stable release distro). So, to be clear, Fedora and Bazzite are NOT stable in this context.
• As (most of) its packages receive regular updates, it isn't unchanging either. And thus, NOT stable in this context as well.
• However, in terms of offering a robust/reliable experience, Fedora is pretty good. Bazzite is even better due to its atomicity^[That is, updates either happen successfully or not at all. So a random power outage (or otherwise) is not able to break the system's integrity.] and the superior distro-management allowed by the bootc model.

So, to answer your question, Fedora and Bazzite will not crash regularly. And, while Fedora might fall a little short of providing as robust of an experience as you might find on Debian and Linux Mint (assuming you won't FrankenDebian your installs), Bazzite may actually rival (and perhaps even eclipse/surpass) Debian and Linux Mint in this respect.

Seems easier to just go with fedora 42 or bazzite or whatever

For your purposes, I agree that going for the Bazzite-route seems to be the easiest.

but now idk what bazzite being immutable even means for what I can’t change and why that’s a big deal so idk.

This is a nuanced discussion that probably deserves more attention, but I'll keep it short for the sake of brevity. In Bazzite's case, strictly-speaking, immutability refers to how most of /usr's content isn't supposed to be changed deliberately by you. This is enforced by the system (in part) by making those files read-only.

In practice, though, there's very little you actually can't do with the system:

• AFAIK, you're forced to use GRUB; which AFAIK is the most used bootloader anyways. Here's a thread discussing support for systemd-boot.
• No support for UKI at the moment. But progress on this has been accelerated (relatively) recently; a presentation from just two weeks ago about the subject matter.
• The situation around dkms/akmods still ain't great and leaves a lot to be desired; you're basically limited to the ones found here. Thankfully, this is something else that's actively being worked on.
• While installing from Fedora's repository through bootc/rpm-ostree is possible, it's actually discouraged in Bazzite's case. Thankfully, there's a plethora of different means to the same end. Furthermore, sysext have come a long way and might become our go-to eventually.

It TDE secure (for personal use)?

Depends on your threat modeling. Though, unfortunately, none of the DEs/WMs on Linux offer perfect security; this even applies to a hardened distro like secureblue.

So, practically-speaking, it probably ain't great. But we aren't used to great anyways 😅.

A bit of tinkering. Thoughts?

Obligatory "There is not a single distro that's the absolute best for each and every one." disclaimer aside, my personal favorite is definitely secureblue for being a hardened-by-default distro that adheres to the ~~'immutable'~~ reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis paradigm while enjoying a healthy stream of improvements pushed out by an active group of contributors.