You described EndeavourOS if you ask me. It’s Arch but preconfigured, so ready to use after install while being as configurable as Arch if you want to go further. Has AUR so you won’t have problems finding a program.

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Leaning on SuSE Tumbleweed for a set it and forget it without the Arch weirdness. Kubuntu for “I really just need an OS and don’t wanna play with it”. Or Linux Mint. Idk I lean more .deb based distros. I love apt.

Depends on desktop Environment honestly.

I’ve seen arch install and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. All the “arch,btw” people are just bragging that they went with the hard mode install setup (probably cheated and used Endeavor lol).

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Debian! It sounds perfect for your use cases and requirements.

I’d recommend Fedora, but the suggestion of EndeavorOS is also good.

I recommend Linux Mint (21.2), which a based on Ubuntu (22.04) and Debian. The cinnamon desktop environment it comes with is pretty similar to windows 7, which makes it easier to use. I think 21.2 will remain supported until 2027 as LTS.

Hi OP, I would like to state that my personal distro of choice is Arch, but I have used a wide selection of the more popular and some niche distros.

First of: Just remember that as long as your distro works for your workflow and requirements, you’re doing fine. Don’t fall for some guilt of “This one is way better because of [subjective opinion for their needs].”

If you want to experiment with distros, just remember to backup your files. One is none, two is one.

Do you have newer hardware such as a brand new NVIDIA or AMD graphics card, or perhaps a new CPU chipset from Intel that came out this year? Then a rolling distro is probably best for you. There’s many tempting options, but my personal “sane default” is of course Arch. There is an installer once you load the ISO on a flash drive. Just ensure you have an internet connection. There will be a learning curve.

If you want to have something to guide you along, then Endevour OS is good. While 99% of your questions can be found on /r/archlinux and Arch’s forums, they (rightfully) expect you to use Arch for Arch-based questions. It’s kind of like asking a question for Ford Mustangs when you drive an F-150. While there’s a lot of overlap, it’s not 1:1.

But if you have something like a laptop from the last few years or more, or just need to focus on your tasks such as your programing and web browsing, and don’t need the latest and greatest, then something more stable is probably best. My top two “I just need it to stay there and remain the same without any worry” distros are:

• Fedora Linux

• Debian Linux

Fedora is going to offer a nice mix of stable yet forward thinking, with major updates rolling out about every 13 months, and it’s a pretty smooth experience upgrading.

Debian is the grand daddy of modern distros, and it is considered the gold standard. They recently made it so 99% of firmware support needed is now included for easier installation. The only thing that you’ll really get update wise is security fixes and any backports you enable.

Keep in mind, Arch/Endeavor itself will not implode if you don’t update daily/weekly, it’s just intended to be refreshed often so when anything big is planned, it’s done in smaller chunks. If you install Arch and then go to a remote island for a few months, you’ll most likely be fine once you get back, but there might be some hiccups.

So if you want more triple A gaming, I think something along Arch/Endevor is “better”, but if you don’t care about the latest and greatest, then I’d say Fedora is a solid foundation.

Sorry for the small novel, but I wanted to state that there is no explicitly wrong option, all that matters is what you consider important. The defaults, the packages, and your workflow. Anything else is secondary.

I can’t recommend enough EndeavourOS. It has a very good defaults and its softwares is very up-to-date since it’s based on Arch Linux. Their community is also very nice.

Of course you can try Arch Linux too, it’s minimalistic and you have to configure most thing yourself. It’s not really hard, but gonna take some time.

Fedora and Linux Mint is also a very good choice.

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You didn’t mention your hardware, but gaming in general benefits from a rolling distro for things like latest drivers, latest wine version etc. (Be aware though that if you have an Nvidia card you’ll have to run the proprietary driver, the open source one performs poorly.)

I understand being wary of Arch-derivatives, but it sounds like you’re the kind of user who would benefit from it and has plenty of experience with Linux, so I can sincerely recommend it. And since this is for a personal computer, nothing bad is really going to happen if it ends up not working out other than the mild annoyance of having to install something else.

But honestly, things don’t break all that often, at least for me. For reference, I’ve been using Endeavour with KDE for a year, and the only real problem I can remember off the top of my head is that Steam was broken for like a week when the new UI rolled out that was somehow incompatible with the current Nvidia driver, but this got fixed with the next update and there was a workaround to make it run with the old UI so it remained usable.

With that background and do you really need suggestions?

From the sounds of it, you’d be happy and comfortable with almost any KDE based distro (Kubuntu, Debian w/ KDE, Fedora, Arch w/ KDE, etc). I think KDE fits the bill for your usecase because it’s easy to use, has good defaults, and is incredibly customizable.

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