OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is excellent and no less beginner friendly than any other major distro, so I wouldn’t worry. It really is one of the most underrated distros out there.

Kubuntu could be a good option for you, but I recommend doing the “Minimal” install to avoid Snaps and bloat.

If you are mostly about gaming and flatpak, then consider Bazzite. You can’t just install packages on Bazzite, so if you need to do things that aren’t already built in then you need to use containers or, as a last resort, create a new layers with rpm-ostree.

For the record, Arch and it’s offshoots don’t especially resonate with me, either. I want my OS to “just work”, but at the same time I want to have the ability to go wild whenever and however I feel like it.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Bazzite lately and I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to most Linux newbies, especially gamers who want their system to “just work.” It’s also a very interesting system for jaded old Linux users because it works so differently than we’re used to. The “everything needs to be a container” paradigm is very interesting and has a lot of security and stability benefits.

If you want more control and freedom, then OpenSUSE is definitely the best option here. I’d only fallback to Kubuntu if there was some software you need that only ships in .deb and you have no other options. I’m not a fan of Canonical or what they’ve done to the Ubuntu ecosystem.

where everything you install comes from the first-party distro repo, you’ll likely be fine.

Canonical’s Snapcraft has a bad reputation for a reason. Many reasons. But compromised apps is a major one.

Linux is gaining market share quickly as the Windows 10 EOL rapidly approaches. There is still a massive amount of perfectly great hardware out there that isn’t officially supported by Windows 11, and only 3 months until Windows 10 reaches EOL.

It sounds like anything with KDE Plasma will make you happy. If the underlying OS has been fine with you, then try Kubuntu. If you want a non-Ubuntu system, try openSuse or Fedora.

Which bullshit? You do realize I am not the person you were originally talking to, yes? I have, however, been following the conversation and this comic came to mind long before the label was thrown.

You packed an awful lot of assumptions in there. It does fit the M.O., though.