Started with Ubuntu (but this was about 10 years ago). Tried out a few different distros - Mint, mostly. I’ve eventually settled on Debian. I don’t got time for shit to randomly break with high frequency (/s). I don’t really have a good reason for why I picked Debian. The best I can think of is that I considered that since so many other distros are derived from Debian, I may as well got to the source.

With my laptop, the biggest issue I have is it doesn’t come back from suspend reliably. Other than that it’s fully functional. I don’t even think I’ve had an update break anything. The only reason I’ve reinstalled is because I broke it myself (like a few months ago when i was trying to install a C++ depencency so I could play dwarf fortress).

Wine and Proton are covering my gaming and Windows application needs. KVM with a (legit) Windows VM is also there to cover the increasingly rare circumstances where I need a proper Windows OS.

A piece of advice - if you deal with industrial/business stuff at all, just go with Debian. There’s a reason why most fields use it in some form.

Linux Mint is widely regarded as one of the best beginner-friendly distros, so it’s a very nice option to start with. It was the second distro I’ve ever used (after Ubuntu) and it felt very stable and welcoming.

Nobara has been really good to me

i suggest you split your disk and try linux in the other partition way before w10 ends, because there’s still a bit of a learning curve and getting used to. for me it took a few tries, a few different distros. i went back to windows for a while a couple of times when i accidentally killed my penquin. btw disable fast startup from windows power button settings if you go this route, that’ll save you from a lot of head scratching. i ended up with mint because it seems to be the only distro that works perfectly with my buggy ass 3060ti.