Kubuntu is most normie. Its just Ubuntu but with KDE instead of Gnome. KDE Neon has the latest KDE but the update process is a mess so I can't recommend it.
Personally I use EndeavourOS with KDE and find it very easy. Updates are literally just typing yay. But I understand that Arch based distros aren't for everyone.
I'm using kubuntu right now. Test it out fedora for about 3 hours before I ran into a bug and went back to the KUbuntu hard drive. Normie means it just works, or at the very least googling the answer leads to good solutions. Only ubuntu has that
I find that endeavor is pretty nice as someone who typically uses windows...I just can't wrap my head around not having a GUI for software installs. Like, I want to install jellyfish, but when I search for it, there were like 30 different ones to choose. Installed a package that I don't want, where do I go to find the exact name of the package and then uninstall?
It was enough to send me to kubuntu, which is what's on my laptop now. Basically only use the laptop for the web too, so likely no reason to change anything up.
Fedora kde spin, kubuntu (ubuntu but with kde), kde neon (kde's distro). I've never used neon or kubuntu as a daily driver (just when I was looking for a distro) although they are supposed to be quite good, but I use fedora gnome as a daily driver and fedora kde should be fairly similar. You can also use distrochooser to find a distro that suits.
I've been using this for a few months now. It's really good. A normie might want to look in to Slowroll though for extra stability. Is Slowroll even out yet?
I'm using Manjaro because SuSE Tubleweed didn't want to install that day. People like to hate on Manjaro but I honestly don't know why - the defaults are fine and I very rarely have issues despite using software from the AUR
It has been 442d 15h 07m 53s since Manjaro !$%&?*# up.
So a year and a half? That's not all that bad really. And that time it was a (admittedly bloody stupid) cock up involving the SSL certificate of their website not of the distro itself
If you go with kubuntu you'll be using snaps by default (which can be removed entirely with some tweaking) and they aren't actually good (as with the recent steam issues)
Rolling release: openSUSE Tumbleweed
Semi-annual release: Fedora KDE Spin
LTS: Kubuntu (3 years), Debian (5 years), AlmaLinux (10 years)
I personally think semi-annual is where it's at. You get packages that are mostly up-to-date (and with Flatpak user-facing software is up-to-date anyway), and you don't have to fear that something will break/be incompatible with every small update.
I'm running TW and it's great. If you don't want a rolling release, OpenSUSE created Slowroll, that is supposed to release major updates every one or two months, which would probably be my go to if I were to start over.
Slowroll is experimental and it's still a rolling release that tracks tumbleweed. It might be less maintenance, but not necessarily more stable in terms of bugs. I've seen some people report pretty major issues with it in the last couple months.
Leap is the version you want if stability is your priority. You can even get the tumbleweed nvidia driver if you have an Nvidia card and want the latest driver. The only os I've used that was more stable than leap was debian. But Leap is much more flexible than Debian.
It comes with all codecs (and even baked in Nvidia-driver if you want!).
Why that and not the normal (mutable) Fedora Workstation KDE spin?
Very simple by default. You basically only "own" your home directory, the rest is indestructible and taken care of.
Has less bugs due to better reproducibility, and if something major should break, you can easily roll back without any waiting time (as opposed to Tumbleweed)
And you can even rebase to Bazzite, a gaming distro, that's based on the uBlue KDE version, or any other spin it you want cleanly
Its a hardened Variant of ublue kinoitr, but I tested it and especially using the "userns" variants, a lot works
flatpak
virtual machines
fingerprint sensor
"userns" means user namespaces, a technology used by browsers, flatpak and Podman/Docker/Toolbox/Distrobox to create Sandboxes, isolating processes. It is used by default on Fedora, so these variants are pretty much like regular Fedora.
Dont think a secure Distro is user-unfriendly. It works pretty normal, but is simply way more secure.
If you want to use Firefox or Torbrowser, install their binaries.
Do you really have to reinstall from scratch or is it sufficient to update the sources.list to the new Debian release and perform dist-upgrade like for Debian?
I've learned from Brodie's video that Ubuntu upload schedule is basically slightly different gnome's schedule. So, KDE with rolling releases is what I think is best.
Though IIRC the scheduling of plasma 6 onward will follow gnome's 6 month period to synchronize with bimonthly releases of distros that does it.