I feel like hunting down drivers hasn't been an issue on Linux for any relatively modern machine I've run in over 10 years.

If it really is something that you have had problems with, maybe try PopOS instead of Debian. The restricting non-free repos by default out of principle with Debian can sometimes get annoying when you need to install certain non-free drivers (looking at you Nvidia), but PopOS is a really well-polished ootb experience that is trivial to install. Second to PopOS for a set it and forget it experience, OpenSUSE is a rock-solid distro that does not seem to get much praise.

I haven't had trouble with drivers using Fedora in years. RPM fusion handles Nvidia drivers just fine. It's a far cleaner and "noob friendly" distro in my opinion, so long as you're able to google "how to install nvidia drivers fedora"

I run Mint on my primary desktop and it's fantastic. What Ubuntu LTS would've become if it had continued to focus on a good desktop experience and pushed Flatpak instead of Snap

Give OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a shot. Better than Ubuntu (in my experience) when it comes to drivers. They have the MacBook Pro 2015 facetimehd webcam (which Ubuntu doesn't have) and my brand new Asus Zenbook S13 OLED was perfect right out of the box. It's a rolling release so you get extremely recent packages. And its KDE is amazing (I switched from XFCE, it was so good). I love it.

You know what distro I had the most experience of hunting down drivers? Ubuntu.

I've given-up on Debian-like systems on a laptop, because the drivers were never good, just decide one last try with bare Debian, and have everything work out of the box. In my experience, Ubuntu never works, and when you suddenly get most things to work, they break down again in a week or two.

No other distro ever gave me that experience.

Use PopOs. Better hardware and is mostly Ubuntu with lots of the dumb Snap stuff removed. Plus some other cool features.

You could also try Linux Mint. I moved to that two years ago when Ubuntu started to go sideways and I've been very happy so far.

What machine are you using ?

You want Linux Mint.

This was my last straw. I installed some 6 month old LTS release, and it had to go through a 2-5 second timeout step on the initial lookup of each new dns name. Then, it would populate a local cache, and work well until the TTL expired or whatever.

Anyway, if you are looking for a noob distro, I recommend manjaro. (The AUR packages are extremely unstable, but other than that, it’s pretty competitive with what Ubuntu was 10-15 years ago.)

But driving everyone away isn't in their own best interest. They're basically shitting in their own well.

FWIW I’ve been using Linux Mint for years and have never had a major issue. Most minor issues are with out of date repository packages which can usually be installed by other means.

I'll add to this: one that uses KDE, please. Kubuntu has served me well but I'm tired of Canonical's shit.

I've had several people recommend the testing branches of Debian for relatively up-to-date software while still being stable FWIW

Sid?

popos maybe?

I've tried it. And while I'm not sure why, its updater never worked for me -- hung while downloading, I think, but there was no feedback.

Honestly, I prefer NixOS. It's far more configurable, which is a nice thing to have in an immutable OS.

By modern I made access to fairly new packages.

I don't want things breaking left, right and centre but I want access to later versions of tools and libraries I'm using.

For example, at work we were told to upgrade Wireshark and VirtualBox to major versions that aren't available in apt on 22.04 after an audit due to vulnerabilities in older versions.

What you're doing sounds like it'll work nicely for me, thanks.

I've used fedora, I have no real issues with it, but I'm not sure if it's going to work for me. At work we target Debian/Ubuntu and I lead the backend team so I need to be on-point; that means not having to mentally switch "environment" all the time because I use something else at home.

Still undecided though; I'm too old (read; jaded) for distro hopping now, but maybe I'll try find a Debian setup as another commenter suggested that'll work.

I’ve been considering switching and haven’t used fedora in years. I’ll have to give it another chance. Snap has seriously annoyed me.

Hey. Yeah, I'd be happy to, time allowing.

I really enjoyed the results of NixOS with flakes but a couple of things were a little more challenging than I have time for to switch it into my daily driver.

It was that steep curve that stopped me going back to date; I liked everything about it, the community was very welcoming and helpful, the declarative nature, and ability to define my machines' states in Git, the documentation, no complaints except the time I'd need to feel as proficient as I am elsewhere.

I ran Manjaro on my gaming desktop for a couple of years but I hated KDE, it felt so clunky, always misbehaving compared to Gnome where I've had relatively few issues.

Please read https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/feature-freeze-exception-seed...

It's not really what I would want on the desktop, but I did mess around with it a little and it's pretty interesting. Next time I need to set up a server for something I think I'll probably use it.