Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which distributions? I switched some of my machines due to the increasing user hostility in Windows, but found it a big pain in the ass, even as a developer. And that's not even considering how many programs/games will only work on Windows.
Give Manjaro a try. Not perfect but on all hardware I installed it ran flawlessly with all hardware detected out of the box with no need to install anything, either from a CD or online. Only single exception being a big network printer (Canon, IIRC) which in the end only required to go to openprinting.org, download the relevand ppd (just a few kbytes) and give it to Cups when configuring the new printer, which was al…
I also don't want to recommend Ubuntu (if I had to pick a single reason it would be snap), but from a problem-googleability-index point of view, it's hard to beat. Perhaps Mint, because it's mostly Ubuntu, but without snap (last I checked).