Mint is far better, I usually recommand it. But Ubuntu is still more popular.
I didn't use Manjaro in many years, so I can't judge it. The biggest problem I see with
Manjaro is that it has access to AUR.
Manjaro has its own repos, and they take more time to release packages than Arch, which can be a good thing stability wise. But if you have applications from AUR installed then you might have conflicts with the dependencies needed and the dependencies used by the system.
As I said, I didn't use Manjaro in a while, so I don't know if it still a problem. If it is, then it's a shame that the biggest advantage of Arch, the AUR, become that much a risk for the system.
I've seen a video where the guy installed steam on Ubuntu 24.04. Of course it was the snap.
The guy usually tests distro to see of it's easy to game on it. If the drivers are easy to install, etc...
He usually launches steam, then tests Valheim, Overwatch, Tomb Raider and cyberpunk.
Overwatch didn't launch, cyberpunk neither. Valheim reported that a service didn't launch. Tomb raider was OK.
Then he uninstalled the steam snap and installed the .deb one. Everything worked.
Enforcing packages is already something that people don't appreciate on Linux, enforcing packages that don't work is surprisingly hated.
Ubuntu is supposed to be a distro for beginners, how am I supposed to recommand a distro when I have no confidence the applications will work ?
It depends on the DE you use. I only know about 3 of them :
KDE can put as many panel as you want with all the system tray you want. You'll have to pine the applications on each panel individually.
On Gnome, you'll have to install extensions as dash to panel to have a panel that can be cloned.
On Cinnamon, you'll be able to create a panel on the second screen, pine applications on it, but not all of system tray can be duplicate.
There is a ticket opened for that : https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/9889
I'd rather trust an Ubuntu community repo than the snap store. At least, for pacstall, the community is able to review the package.
Since the snap store is the default store on Ubuntu , there is more chance that he will be targeted by malicious software than a community repo than has to be manually installed.
Pacstall is AUR for Ubuntu (so UUR?) based distributions.
It is certainly less complete than AUR, but still it might be useful depending on your needs.
I have 2 screens, I like to have the same panel on each screen, so when I use one in fullscreen, I can use the other one. So far, the only Desktop Environment that can give me that without too much difficulties, is KDE (even if I had to do it manually).
If you have the same use, maybe Kubuntu is a great choice. Tuxedo OS would be the same as Kubuntu, but you don't have to change the priority of the package manager, because the snaps are already disabled. ( they got another load of malicious softwares in the snapstore recently, and some snap might not be as good as .deb or flatpak).
If not, Linux Mint is an out of the box distribution. If your hardware is the most recent one, they have a "edge iso".
With proton, it works flawlessly :) . I've been playing it for 2 years now.
There was a Linux version, but it didn't work as good as the windows+ proton version. I don't know if it's still maintained or if it got improved since the 0.9 version.
I would stick to basic recommendations and go from easiest to more and more advanced distribution, to avoid scaring beginners :
graphical installation + easy to setup (nvidia + codec )+stable : basically Ubuntu based distribution (but not Ubuntu, some snaps, i.e. steams, are more bugged than the flatpak and the .deb . I wouldn't recommand a distribution that force bugged app for beginners ) + others
graphical installation : user will have to install nvidia drivers, codec or other useful things manually. The distribution can have several update a week with more risk to break, but is still considered solid and has a preconfigured way to roll back (snapshot) or more lightweigth and stable depending of the choice : fedora, opensuse tumbleweed, Debian+ others...
do it yourself distributions : for advanced users or motivated people that want to learn it the hard way. Distributions are up to date and have either a risk to break or user has to manually configure about everything (or both ) : arch, void Linux, gentoo, ...
"Gaming" distributions could be placed between the 2 first categories as they are a kind of out of the box distribution but more up to date than the stable distributions.
Low ram/CPU consumption could be a side option at every step (easy, mid, hard)
I didn't tried immutable distributions in a while, so I don't know how to place them. My experience one year ago (kinoite, silver blue, blend os), was that it was more complicated than a regular distribution to do what I needed, but it was 1 year ago, so I wouldn't know where to place it.
I'm quite a beginner in Linux, I love to test distributions to see how far I can go without using the terminal, and without breaking the distribution. So my vision can be quite narrow comparing to more experienced users.
This is exactly what I did on my OP7 (only 4 years old). A new battery, a new USB port and a new back (thank you OnePlus for the back in glass).
I installed another ROM... And the only drawback on that "brand new" phone is that the camera is slow and not as good than the stock one ( even with Gcam or others derivative).
I'm looking for a stable rolling too. But since yesterday, I've quit tumbleweed for fedora.
I left tumbleweed because I wasn't able to find/install/update non flatpak application. The bug is only for KDE (gnome last ISO works fine, but not the KDE ISO). It was not much of a problem since everything else worked for me, but I find it weird to not fix that kind of bug, even on a ISO.
I guess void Linux would be the answer, but it requires a bit of work to set it up. Maybe, when I'll have time to learn a bit more about it.
Slow roll would be another option I guess : 1 month slower than Tumbleweed, but it is still flagged as experimental by suse.
Solus has been revived last year. I tested their first iso from 2023. I found it laggy and didn't liked the package manager, but 1 year can make big changes on Linux.
I don't use a Nvidia card, nor play Starfield, but I've seen some videos explaining that Nvidia drivers 535 don't work well with Starfield. People had to downgrad to 530 or 525 to have it work.
I don't know if nvidia released new drivers since, but if you have issues trying Starfield, you can keep an eye on that.
Mint is far better, I usually recommand it. But Ubuntu is still more popular.
I didn't use Manjaro in many years, so I can't judge it. The biggest problem I see with Manjaro is that it has access to AUR.
Manjaro has its own repos, and they take more time to release packages than Arch, which can be a good thing stability wise. But if you have applications from AUR installed then you might have conflicts with the dependencies needed and the dependencies used by the system.
As I said, I didn't use Manjaro in a while, so I don't know if it still a problem. If it is, then it's a shame that the biggest advantage of Arch, the AUR, become that much a risk for the system.