I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.
Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.
This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.
Then I’d try Silverblue. It’s literally just Fedora Workstation but with their new immutable tech. It’s incredibly stable once you install it and is built around having all your things running in containers. If shit fucks up, you can easily roll back to previous versions. Silverblue also has flavours in KDE and Sway. Since it’s literally Fedora, it’s also made by Red Hat and is what Fedora will eventually turn into.
I just remembered I have a lenovo gaming laptop that gets no love because it is huge and I stopped lugging it around when I inherited a MacBook Air.
Time to try it!