My recommendstions would be -

1. Linux Mint / vanilla debian
2. Fedora / Nobara
3. Opensuse tumbleweed (Like fedora, but rolling release and has btrfs snapshots configured out of the box)
4. Endavour OS / vanilla arch ( if you want to configure everything manually)
5. NixOS (very different distro, you can configure your entire system with a single file)

People have a misconception that Linux Mint is a newbie distro but don’t let that stop you from using it. It’s quite stable and will serve you very well.

For Desktop Environment -

You can try out XFCE, it doesnt look great out of the box, but it has all the options you’ll need to make it look to your liking.

Then there is also Cinnamon, it doesn’t have many configuration options but is really nice in general. The flagship version of Linux Mint comes with Cinnamon.

I’ve been using Mint as a daily driver and it’s the first distro/de that has worked as a full replacement. Everything working out of the box, though I changed the default Nvidia driver from the open source to the proprietary one (and Mint even provided a handy utility for that). My dual monitor setup works great.

I don’t even dual boot for gaming–with Lutris, most things work right away or with a little tweaking. Though admittedly I don’t play the newest games.

All the benefits of Ubuntu, with flatpak and a nice DE.

I’m really happy with Fedora Workstation. I actually think Gnome is pretty great these days.

You’ll probably want KDE as it has the most options to set graphically and still just works out of the box. It has a theme store so you can just try a few different ones.

The footprint is still about a hundred times smaller than windows, so don’t worry about that.

For a distro, I’d recommend not using ubuntu because it tries to force snaps on its users and they cause a ridiculous amount of issues. Especially if you want to do anything in python.

From how you’ve described modifying your distro, that’s literally NixOS. Your entire config is declared in a git repo, when you update the system it rebuilds it from that repo. But you’ll have to learn the nix language, and it’s not a easy-to-use, beginner-friendly distro.

• “I don’t enjoy configuration and I really hate debugging it, but I can muddle through when I have to”
  • declarative system like NixOS – one master config file you keep backed up – if something goes wrong, you can rollback to a previous config or do a full rebuild with the backup config
  • [The Linux Experiment] NIX OS: the BEST package manager on the MOST SOLID Linux distribution
• “but I’ve never been a big fan of the window Managers”
  • browse through !unixporn@lemmy.ml – Linux has a LOT of window managers and most are (overly) customizable
• as for “bleeding edge” distros
  • NixOS (above)
  • Debian Sid (unstable branch) – Ubuntu is based on Debian but is community run, you’re not subject to the whims of Canonical’s choices
  • Arch or EndeavourOS (Arch based) – most of the problems people have is indiscriminate use of AUR (user packages) rather than sticking with official package channels
  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – rolling release channel of openSUSE, uses btrfs snapshots for rollback and recovery

Since you want GUI config go with OpenSUSE. it has Yast2-gtk GUI for all admin config, server config, software install, etc. And if you mess anything up you do a boot from previous snapshot to get back to normal operation, if all is good issue snapper rollback command, and that snapshot is now your default boot. (No need to diagnose what is wrong, more time being productive) if you can’t find a package in the GUI search (of default repos) then software.opensuse.org has OBS community and experimental packages (like arch AUR). During the install summary you can go into software details and remove all, or any packages you want, or add…so you don’t have to do the full install of everything if you like more minimal system.

Never forget that no matter the distro (well most of them) you can install whatever desktop environment you want. That said, if you want to dip your toes in first time, I’d go with Mint. Its debian based, so most stackoverflow solutions will already have the apt install command you need for you. It has a variety of DE options out of the box on their website too.

Also, KDE and Gnome have changed a lot over the last 5 years. Id give each of them another shot.

EDIT: yes, pine is based

If you want Budgie, give Solus a try. It is an easy to maintain system, is rolling, stable, and independent.

For a DE, GNOME with Dash to Panel is a great Windows replacement. I’d recommend using X11 for now because Nvidia.

For a distro, NixOS is great. It is configured in the Nix language, which is very easy (IMO) to wrap your head around if you know any language. The documentation is procedurally generated and is quite good. The default repo is the largest default repo in any distro, with PRs handled in GitHub.

I like to set aliases to make life easier.

The only issue is it’s difficult to get downloaded binaries running at times without creating a package for it. For games, I use steam-run (separate from Steam), for AppImages, appimage-run. Flatpaks just work.

It’s either enjoyable or it’s not. Depends on what you like. You can also copy your config to replicate your system on another device, even across arches or form factors, like from a PC to a laptop to a phone to a Raspberry Pi.

If that doesn’t sound appealing, Arch is a fantastic, more standard distro, or Endeavor if you want a GUI, preconfigured install.

I would recommend MX Linux. It’s solid and has a lot of nice and simple plus that are very much appreciated (a menu entries editor, some selected packages not available in debian, grub editor and helper, a very active and welcoming community)

You’ll likely settle on Linux Mint because it just works.

After arch I’ve always told myself nixos; however, I never find a reason to switch from arch and xfce.

I like to not faff too much with my system for Dev work. I want to love pop but it eventually Bork’s at some point. But I love pop shell as a simple window manager like experience with good shortcuts.

So I currently use open suse tw gnome with pop shell. I’m well aware that one day this won’t work anymore but for me it’s solid.

Despite my experience I would recommend looking at pop as it ticks a lot of the boxes you stated. Big community, window manager workflow, Ubuntu based, styled without being distracting.

pro tip use Linux distro from any of the lists posted here, use docker for your local llm, which are often Ubuntu based. consider getting a more modern graphics card like 30 series with 16gb vram