Übercomplicated

+1 for Quod Libet

I used Fedora, and am now leaving for the exact reason you’re leaving Arch (plus IMO bad repos). Switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed a few months ago and am having a much better experience than with Fedora :D; I use the PC for programming, audio recording and mixing, document stuff, etc. (No gaming though).

Nobara is good but does break regularly, FYI… If you’re a “power-user” I wouldn’t recommend it as a daily driver.

There’s also Void Linux, which hasn’t ever broken on me due to an update, but is still a lot of work, due to its nature. It’s actually quite stable though, and you might enjoy it, since it’s quite similar to Arch and has very large repos.

I can’t say much about immutable distros, as the only one I’ve used is bazzite, which was kinda horrible (broke constantly).

Well, I hope that helped. Good luck!

+1 — I tried getting the gosh darn API key for hours with no success. Share your secrets (original commenter)!

It crushes me, CRUSHES ME, that the wretched Fedora beats my beloved openSUSE Tumbleweed in popularity! Why, oh why!??!

Seriously though, why do people prefer Fedora? I used it for 2 years and was very, very happy after switching my daily driver to Tumbleweed. It felt faster, had better repos, defaults, stability, etc. — aaaaaand it’s rolling release, which is so much easier (ironically) from a stability perspective (every, EVERY, Fedora release something would break for me, gosh-darn-it). I just don’t get it; am I the only one experiencing this?

OpenSUSE is my favorite distro.

I first installed it after having an abysmal experience with Fedora (bad repos, unstable, etc.). It took me a while to really enjoy, but after figuring out how to update the system properly (it’s zypper dup not zypper up), all my issues were quickly resolved.

OpenSUSE is extremely stable, has great repos (stable, large, up-to-date, good naming and dependency schemes, etc.), has a strong focus on security, provides appealing defaults (much better than fedora’s), while remaining minimalist enough to have good performance and to be useful for someone like me who is going to extensively customize their system anyway.

I’ve tried bazzite but hated it, as it’s difficult to customize, breaks very easily, and doesn’t seem to have a notable performance improvement over something like Nobara (unfortunately fedora based, good otherwise if gaming is your main thing).

To somewhat answer your question: openSUSE Tumbleweed is the best “normal use-case” distro (in my opinion). It is, however, not super beginner friendly, has a smaller community and fewer docs, and isn’t laser-focused on performance. It’s good for someone who wants to settle down in their Linux experience, and find a daily driver for their most used device.

Other, more specialized options, you might find interesting:

• Nobara Linux: by far the best gaming distro, maintained by the glorious glorious eggroll (proton-ge creator). It breaks every once-and-a-while, but everything is always fixed within one update, at most a day apart, and the breaks are never disabling.
• Void Linux: uses runit instead of SystemD, meaning it’s super, super fast. Has a great installer, is stable, and has good defaults, but absolutely a horrible choice for beginners, if you consider yourself such.

Again, openSUSE is absolutely fantastic, and my own daily driver — but I have Nobara installed on my gaming PC, and Void installed on my portable laptop. In the end, it’s all a matter of use-case.

Edit: sorry for the insanely long response, my thoughts have been meandering today…