I’ve been all over the gamut of distros, arch based, Ubuntu based, you name it, and Fedora is it. It’s more bleeding edge than Ubuntu based distributions like Mint and Pop_OS, but not as high maintenance as Arch based distributions. When a Linux noob starts getting Pacman notifications about unmerged pacnew files, they’re going to get turned off pretty quick.

Fedora is rock solid, clean, smooth, and generally free of issues for me for about two years now.

No, but if you want an easy arch install EndeavourOS is much more reputable.

I don’t want to denigrate people that it works for, because I know the people that love them love them.

Has the battery life (more specifically drain while in suspend) gotten better? I’ve heard horror stories on that, port availability (pretty limited ports because each port attachment takes up so much space) and some complaints about build quality and durability.

Framework is a great concept, a great idea for places technology could go, but even its newest offerings are janky. I’ve seen the reviews from people who want to love them. I too want to love them. The modular tech they’re built around is cool as hell but in terms of daily use laptop that moves with you day in day out, it just ain’t it, imho.

Ive run Linux on multiple think pads, a razer laptop, and an asus gaming laptop, and they all work fine. Buy the hardware that works for you, and put Linux on it. It’s that simple.

2nd Fedora. I used Mint, Pop!_OS, Open SUSE tumbleweed, Nobara, EndeavourOS, MX Linux, Manjaro (eww) and Fedora finally clicked as my primary distribution. It’s not without its occasional hiccups. A while back, waking my machine from suspend stopped working. It took a month but they fixed it with an update, I didn’t bother with any work arounds because I knew they would.

Gaming and multimedia experience has been great. Between the RPM Fusion repos, COPR, and flatboat, I can always find the software I need. It’s solid, fresher than anything Ubuntu based, and rarely has issues.