Guix, but it's not for linux newbies I think. Although it's completely libre, too much in fact, it didn't have some drivers I need for my laptop so I needed to non-libre it a bit...
Debian is very beginner friendly and very stable, but stable means the software is pretty old compared to other distros. Security updates are timely and everything no trouble on that front, but often I wondered why some app didn't have some feature only to find out it does, for over a year in fact, but the version implementing it hadn't made it through Debians QA yet.
I think it's a really good place to start, but if you find it "lacking" you may want to look into alternatives.
Also remember you can multi-boot, so you can try different distros, or set up a virtual machine to testdrive some distro. It's not terribly difficult but does require some time.
Guix has a very small but dedicated community, I respect the maintainers not giving nonfree software upstream support since it's hard enough maintaining the free software in the repo anyway.
I'd argue that Debian's slow release cycle is more a liability than a strength nowadays. GNOME+KDE gets a new release every 6 months or so and COSMIC will get one every year, this means that while using Debian you're missing out on a lot of features during those 2 years (Debian is still on Plasma 5.27 while upstream is on 6.2). Wayland+Pipewire+Portals (not as easy to say compared to just "Xorg" lol) is moving really quickly compared to the last decade or so.
If Debian switched to a yearly release cycle then I could see most of these problems be less of an issue but 2 years is an epoch in modern Linux time.
Guix, but it's not for linux newbies I think. Although it's completely libre, too much in fact, it didn't have some drivers I need for my laptop so I needed to non-libre it a bit...
Debian is very beginner friendly and very stable, but stable means the software is pretty old compared to other distros. Security updates are timely and everything no trouble on that front, but often I wondered why some app didn't have some feature only to find out it does, for over a year in fact, but the version implementing it hadn't made it through Debians QA yet.
I think it's a really good place to start, but if you find it "lacking" you may want to look into alternatives.
Also remember you can multi-boot, so you can try different distros, or set up a virtual machine to testdrive some distro. It's not terribly difficult but does require some time.
Guix has a very small but dedicated community, I respect the maintainers not giving nonfree software upstream support since it's hard enough maintaining the free software in the repo anyway.
I'd argue that Debian's slow release cycle is more a liability than a strength nowadays. GNOME+KDE gets a new release every 6 months or so and COSMIC will get one every year, this means that while using Debian you're missing out on a lot of features during those 2 years (Debian is still on Plasma 5.27 while upstream is on 6.2). Wayland+Pipewire+Portals (not as easy to say compared to just "Xorg" lol) is moving really quickly compared to the last decade or so.
If Debian switched to a yearly release cycle then I could see most of these problems be less of an issue but 2 years is an epoch in modern Linux time.