I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based on Ubuntu, so no Pop OS. Is Manjaro a possibly good distro for me to check out?
Manjaro is a great way for a new linux user to inevitably break their install and have no idea how they did it, then never figure out how to fix it, while breaking it more while trying.
I’ve never installed it, but I know a few people who used it as their first distro, and none of them recommend it, or other arch based distros, and especially not to new users. For the above reason.
Regular arch is better, but I’d only recommend it if you are interested in becoming a power user.
I have been using fedora for a while now, and it has been surprisingly stable and functional out of the box. I’ve only broken my install once in the past two years, and that’s been because I do a lot of power user things. As for new linux users, I’ve recommended it to a few friends who were starting out, and they’ve had great success with it.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is another distro that might be good if you want something that just works while being rolling release. I’ve tried it out alongside OpenSUSE Leap and Fedora, but ended up preferring Fedora.
Debian was my first distro, and I’ve enjoyed using it. I used this extensively before I was much of a power user with great success, and I’ve heard many people say great things about debian 12.