yeh years ago, to get Linux working you might need an older computer because the kernels did not catch up yet. Nowadays, I can just buy any new computer and can be sure that 90% of my devices will work with it.
The only problem now is modern standby. Intel and AMD kept fucking up standby mode on laptops.
the simplest answer would be: just try them all by yourself and see which one fits. Try only the popular ones btw, otherwise you’d have a hard time finding supports.
Word of advice: dont mind the aesthetics, but pay attention to stuff like package managers / packages and community. Here is what I meant:
Unless you have special flavor from a distro like XFCE from Manjaro, any Linux distro can be made pretty. I can have Debian 12 on one computer and something like Arch on another, and I can still make both look exactly the same. So dont choose a distro just because it looks pretty, you can do that with any of them.
Packages and package managers are so important, those are how you get software on Linux. Debian has a lot of softwares in its repos. Arch’s main repos do not have as much, but its AUR repos allow a lot of softwares to be installed.
Do you like apt, the manager for Ubuntu/Debian? Or do you prefer dnf, the manager for Fedora and RHEL? Package managers are more of a style really. I like Fedora’s dnf but Arch’s pacman is way faster.
ONE OF US ! ONE OF US !
is this your production machine? If yes, dont type random commands until you know exactly what they are.
I know it’s Linux and you can try many things as you want, but unless you are very experienced, dont do it on your main laptop.
It is pretty difficult because you can do things like installing new enviroments or try out different hacks for free. If you really want to tinker, do it on a 2nd laptop or just in Virtual Machine.