I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are "mainstream" "beginner friendly" distros, right? I don't want anything too advanced, right?
Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had "no signal"). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.
Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I'm used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything "just work" flawlessly, but it's so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!
Credit where it's due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I'd never strayed from Gnome because I'm not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it's "simple" and "customizable" but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only "simple" in that it doesn't allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).
The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.
I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the "beginner" distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!
edit: i am DYING at the number of "you're using it wrong" comments here. never change people.
Generally Fedora's purpose is to make sure nothing gets into redhat (RHEL) Linux. So if there are breaking changes to things, you'll be getting them.
Historically if people had wanted to learn I'd push them towards Ubuntu because its Debian based, meaning familiar enough to most of what runs the modern internet that I could eventually (I'm not a Linux admin) fix.
These days if you just want to use it I'd pick Linux mint, just since they seem to be orienting towards that way. Arch or SUSE based something if you want to learn more about how the packages you install work together. But the choice in distro honestly feels more like an installer and package manager choice than anything. a distro is just a choice of which thousand things to hide in a trenchcoat.
I just ideologically don't like IBM and would rather hand in my bug reports to the volunteer ecosystem.
Installer is a big part.
2nd biggest part is how system is configured.
Debian is not afraid to create its own version of default configuration. Take some mail software as example.
Arch on the other hand is most likely just going to ship original application configuration.
Debian might be nice and easy, until configuration change is necessary. Suddenly, original application documentation doesn’t apply. Debian documentation may be obsolete or absent. And that is the beginning of reading all of the configuration files. Normally, it is not a problem until something like email system configuration is necessary.
That’s when Arch philosophy of making fewest changes to software comes to shine. Original documentation usually works and applies well.