I have had lots of issues with the Software Center in the past as well. I just blamed it on Gnome and used the CLI anyway, as I’m more comfortable seeing what exactly happens in case it goes wrong. But it seems it has been fixed now because it’s been month (maybe even a year or two, I couldn’t say) that I’ve not had to complain.

(But yeah, to each their own, in the end it’s not really important)

Eh, didn’t know that. I can’t remember any drama when I was a user, but maybe I just wasn’t following the news and didn’t fall into any of the userbase that suffered from a mishap. But good to know.

Any major distro should do it imo. Personally I run Fedora because I tried it out years ago and I’m past the distro hopping phase. It just works™ (most of the time, as every distro).

PopOS is getting traction, and I think it’s deserved. I only use it on my gaming rig and never had major problems. Based on Ubuntu if I recall so the majority of Ubuntu tutos should be compatible.

I tried ZorinOS as well. It’s paid (10 bucks per major version if I recall), but it’s surprisingly stable and well fleshed out. It aims to mimic Windows or MacOS design out of the box, for people that migrate to Linux. They have a free lite version. Based on Ubuntu as well. The only reason it’s not my main OS is because Fedora is already installed on my main rig and I’m lazy.

As suggested, Debian is still its old self, and it’s a good thing. The stability thing although means that you won’t get the latest bells and whistles. On the other end of the spectrum there’s Arch but it’s far less “set and forget” than the other distros. At least it’s longer to set, harder to forget. I would rather go with Manjaro, with which I had a really good experience years ago, never any major struggle. But It still needs a bit of minimal maintaining.

Years ago, when Ubuntu started their Unity and Amazon partnering bullshit, I switched to Linux Mint. I don’t know how it is today, but at the time it was the go-to replacement for Ubuntu: all the advantages without any of the inconvenient.

Honestly, just pick one of the major ones, try it in a live environment to be sure the defaults suit you, and you should be good to go for years.