Plenty out there to choose from... Off the top of my head the Arch-based bunch (Arco, Artix, Garuda, EndeavourOS), then the independent ones (PCLinuxOS, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Solus - btw, Budgie looks great!)... And many, many others.

cause it doesnt need

My thoughts exactly...


My thoughts exactly...

Maybe I'll try a rolling release on my secondary laptop just to get its feel.

Of those, I guess for home use I've been considering the most Manjaro or OpenSUSE. I've tried them out only briefly. (Earlier I thought Manjaro was somehow related to the old Mandrake and Mandriva distros, but apparently not...).

how can u be unhappy if you havent even used it?:D

Scientists say and the statistics show that Windows 10 causes schizophrenia with its incoherent split-brain user interface.

It is Microsoft's ploy to move people to Windows 10 X, which is allegedly so much better walled garden than Windows 10 S or Windows RT. In case people don't adopt Windows 10 X in droves, Microsof is already preparing to release Windows 10 Y, as their plan B.

Debian's setting up of proprietary codecs is the reason I'm having doubts about OpenSUSE+KDE. Otherwise it'd be as stable as they come.

I can't see the damn thing in this install. Yet I find other useless crap.
Well, not only the UI is a mix of legacy and modern, it's the whole system.
Time to ditch this leaky boat.
Haha

For nixos, every upgrade creates a generation. This is a system recipe written by you, projected onto the software channel (which is similar to releases in other Linuxes, like 21.04, 21.06 on ubuntu and stored in build recipe form - like ebuild tree on gentoo) and its automatical resolve results in an actual build and download of individually contained components (instantiation), which are bound into what is called a generation. Generations are incrementally increased on upgrades. Each generation symlinks down to individual files, removing it allows garbage collector to purge every leftover. Any software action is painless and leaves no traces. The installation is also atomic, if there are breakages, you will never be left with broken system. Only limited amount of software is kept to make atomic switch possible, its package db driver as well as paths (if paths change on new system, it would make rollback impossible, so that is kept - but in transparent way). For example, my system is from year 2017 and contains no old cruft. Its possible to just take a build recipe and have nixos "terraform" your system automatically using current software state (channel). I don't know of any lazier and more failsafe os than this. Good luck.

Thanks.

That's another vote for Kubuntu, and from what I read it seems to be the best fit to what I want.

If only I didn't have a dislike of Ubuntu (stemming from my college days 15 years back)...

I mean I wouldn't mind it being based off Ubuntu in itself if it was called something else entirely, like Mint.

I used it, more like forced to use by an IT department which keeps it and connected machines in same policy. Its not my os of choice. I can imagine it to be good for people who mostly spend time playing games, however. Or IT departments, in some corner cases like I mentioned.

Mandrake root, someone at Microsoft must've chewed on the damn thing!

I wish Solus was more developed, complex... Budgie is a good DE and Solus itself a good distro, but it needs more work.
Manjaro, for some reason, especially the KDE version of it, is kinda heavy on the resources. Will have to keep an eye on it though.
I have no experience with OpenSUSE, so I can't talk about it.
Arco is interesting and the team seems dedicated to the project. I follow Erik Dubois on YouTube, he has numerous videos on the distro.
https://m.youtube.com/user/maclover696

Oh, I liked Salient OS at a first glance. Looking closer I saw some things I do not like. That's just my opinion though, others seem to be content with it. Gaming and media-centric, Arch-based.

Garuda is like the new kid around the block, it has good parts, but overall I find it bloated and too flashy. Them colors can make one go brrrrr!

So many choices!

I was also considering Manjaro, I mean I still do, but I'd rather go for XFCE for several reasons. KDE seems to have lost its mind on Manjaro. Either that, or it does not play well with my hardware.
It's arguably the most accepted Arch-based distro, though some avoid it, pointing fingers at the team for some "shady" decisions, others see it as unstable ("My Manjaro broke on me").

I will admit, I'm fond of Pop OS and Solus at this point in time.
Also, Fedora 34 is right around the corner. Curious to see what the fuss is about GNOME 40.

You´re welcome. I also dislike the Ubuntus but well, Kubuntu seems like the best choice according to your wishes.

if you like to tinker maybe you coud consider Slackware. The latest stable version was released in 2016 and it still receives active support. This is longer than most LTS versions. But it uses KDE 4.

Right now Slackware 15.0 has reached beta and is using the latest kernels and KDE Plasma version and the support can be deemed to be equal or longer than most LTS distros. However, you need to be technically adept. It´s not difficult, but it comes from a different time when things were done differently.

Oh, so THAT'S where Mandrake/Mandriva has continued to live, kinda...? I wondered what distro that PCLInuxOS is based on, but Wikipedia suggested it is "kinda" to those two.

I used to run Mandrake or Mandrive for awhile on one of my home PCs a long time ago, it might have well been the first Linux distribution I ever tried, at least at home... I don't really remember much about them though.

EDIT: Well, apparently there still is also OpenMandriva... Damn, how are people able to choose their Linux distro with so many options? Oh well, at least most of them are free, so it doesn't hurt to try...