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Linux Mint if you want a “just works” distro that isn’t Ubuntu. It’s Ubuntu-based, but with a better desktop and no snap.

Nobara if you want a distro that focuses on gaming. It’s Fedora-based and maintained by Glorious Eggroll, known for his custom Wine and Proton forks.

If you want Arch, just use Arch. It’s much less of a bitch to install with the archinstall script compared to earlier releases. EndeavourOS is another option – basically Arch, but preconfigured with a desktop and a graphical installer.

I’m currently deciding between nobara and vanilla arch, coming from windows (but am a software engineer). I like arch because, as I understand it, its lighter and more customisable. I also like that it’s not corporate driven which potentially has conflict of interests (which I’m to understand red hat might). My biggest worry though is how much time I may spend maintaining an arch desktop and the possibility of hitting fail states too frequently. Obviously I can overcome some of that with good a good backup system, but I’d like to spend less nights working on my desktop and more time working on projects my desktop should enable. So I’ve been recommended Nobara as still cutting edge but more stable.

If anyone has some strong recommendations or thoughts I’d appreciate it. I think sticking as close to main is important and if fedora really does introduce issues I can always jump ship to arch or Debian after I’ve gotten my feet wet - but I’d like to not for as long as possible.