i started off using ubuntu back in the day, but these days i refuse to use any of the distros downstream or tied to a for profit company (so not fedora, opensuse, or ubuntu - and by extension mint), and i prefer distros that are used as the base for other distros rather that ones dependant on another distro (so extra not mint, ubuntu, endeavour, or manjaro).

that leaves, essentially, slackware, arch, and debian.
i am too lazy to learn slackware, so for my main desktop i use arch and for other machines i own i use debian.

departing from the original question:
for new people i mostly recommend cachyos, debian, or bazzite depending on their ability & interest

i feel that, unlike the other ‘arch but easier’ distros, cachy actually adds something to the arch ecosystem (the optimized packages) and the installer showing videos of the different desktop environments all running on cachy is excellent

looks neat, and the ai disclosure is appreciated

this looks great. before using it i would love to know - if gen-ai has been used in the creation of helix notes, in what capacity has it been used?