In case people are really ambitious or adventurous and want to avoid all of this stuff completely, what Linux distro (or other open source OS) is currently trendiest/most useful/relevant? Is it still Ubuntu?
Depending on your needs, Fedora is also quite usable. It leans more in the FOSS direction, and while it is fairly bleeding edge with regards to Linux specific tooling, it is somewhat more hesitant to include non-free software, which may include device drivers and firmware. Last I checked, Ubuntu still had a higher degree of Just Works(tm) than Fedora for this reason. Fedora is very similar to RedHat and CentOS, so if you're looking for a business-focused distribution, this is a strong contender. Might not be as useful as a casual desktop install though.
Linux Mint is also wildly popular. It's Ubuntu-based, but it leans much less in the pure-FOSS direction, and is willing to include more grey area tools like video codecs and non-free device drivers. It also uses the Cinnamon desktop environment, which may feel a bit more familiar if you're coming from Windows. Some of my colleagues swear by it, so I think it's worth checking out.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. I run Arch Linux and am perfectly happy to tinker around with the deepest guts of my system when needed. I wouldn't actually recommend that to a new user though, while I enjoy the absolute freedom to dive that deep, it can occasionally be quite frustrating.
+1 to Cinnamon - AFAICT it's the best way to preserve a classic desktop-style desktop, rather than having a desktop which is trying to be a giant mobile phone.
I do use Debian (sometimes) and Ubuntu on my VPSs and on my Virtual Box in Windows.
I was just asking because its easy to get out of touch.
(Tangent: though likeable in many ways, Fedora was still too much fart-arsing about for me & after a few months I went back to Windows. I don't like it, but then the sad state 2019 has brought us to is that all desktop OSs are rubbish, so 'not liking it' is an unusable choice criterion).
I'm on Fedora since v.28 gradually upgrading packages and disto versions. I've seen no problems whatsoever.
Anyway, the upshot is that at least based on my experience (limited as I'm not a big media consumer), media playing does just work OOB with current Fedora.
What I mean is, in Arch or Manjaro, how often are there already packages available for things that people normally want to do, versus needing to compile something manually or work around broken dependencies?
This extends to some closed source projects other distros don't include on principle, like Steam [1].
Additionally, the AUR is basically a wrapper around "manually compiling" where users can submit scripts to do it for you. If you install a helper like `yay`, it's as seamless as installing from the official repo and extends coverage to things like the OpenTTD modpack I play [2] and its latest git commit [3]. That said, the AUR is still ultimately running user provided scripts so do make sure to take the offer to read the install script beforehand, most are maybe 5-10 lines.
[1]: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/multilib/x86_64/steam/
Most importantly, I’ve had the least driver issues with Manjaro. (Especially with NVIDIA gpus, which I’ve had nightmares with it on Ubuntu.) It also comes with a nice GUI program in which you can change between kernel versions and GPU drivers (open source or proprietary)
Switched this year to Bodhi Linux, wont look back. It is based on Ubuntu.
Not really. It uses barely more memory than Xfce.