Hey folks! I'm getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I'm planning to convert into a "cyberdeck" with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in breadboard, and other hardware hacking fun.
On the OS, I'm planning to try NixOS as a baremetal hypervisor (KVM/QEMU) and run my "primary" OSes in VMs with hardware passthrough. If perf is horrible, I'll probably switch back to baremetal after a bit. But, I'm not likely going to be gaming on it so, I'm not likely to have much issue.
Once the hypervisor is working in a manner that I like, I should have an easy time backing up, rolling back, swapping out my "desktop" OS. I've been using Linux as my pretty much my only OS for over a decade (I use MacOS as a glorified SSH client for work). Most of my time has been on distros in the Debian or RHEL families (*buntu, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, CentOS, etc) and I pretty much live in the terminal these days.
With all of this said, I am coming to you folks for help. I would like you folks to share distros, desktop environments, window managers that you think I should give a try, or would like to inflict on me and what makes them noteworthy.
I can't guarantee that I'll get through suggestions, as my ADHD has been playing up lately, but I'll give it an attempt. Seriously. If you want me to try Hannah Montana Linux, I'll do it and report back on the experience.
EDIT: Thank you all for your fantastic suggestions. I'm going to start compiling them into a list this weekend.
For a totally different experience, and if you ever want to spin up a distro in a "container" there's BlendOS https://blendos.co/
I'm an Arch user so I'm sort of staying where I am but am always open to ideas, so I tried Blend a while back. As said on this page for the distro: https://itsfoss.com/immutable-linux-distros/
"In other words, you can install any package on the distro (RPM, DEB, etc.) while getting the immutability and update reliability as one would expect."
That pretty much describes it and I recall, it did well. I also tried this one which is touted to be AI enhanced and feels more like they are making good progress: https://www.makululinux.com https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/new-makululinux-release-brings-ai-to-the-max-177104.html
To get the AI to the max, you need to pay a fee, but It's all in the name of supporting development.
Intriguing. I do have reservations about "all-the-package-types" but need to give that a try, for novelty, if nothing else.
Wow, I don't pay as much attention to developments in the space as I did a few years ago and I can see I should start to again. These are some pretty interesting distros you've linked.