Ubuntu is crap nowadays fedora is the way to go.
But honestly, it depends on what you're using Ubuntu for. As a server or a VM for some work-adjacent purpose like this, Fedora's release cycle is too fast. I prefer Debian simply because there's no bullshit to it, it will always be there, its the base for most Docker images. I also consider most VMs ephemeral which gets around my annoyance with apt not having anything nearly as cool as dnf history.
I'm actually fine with modern CentOS but "I'll stick it on Debian" has been a really good default for me for the past 20 years.
As a desktop/workstation, Fedora's pretty good! Good package manager, good release cadence, strong commitment to upstreaming everything. GNOME has started to annoy me but Fedora's KDE release is great.
I absolutely love Fedora and run it on my main desktop. That being said I also cut my teeth on CentOS so I’ve always had a soft spot for the RHEL approach to Linux. As for the bleeding edge aspect, I’ve rarely encountered issues with the latest updates. I had to do a bit of troubleshooting with pipewire and my HDMI output, and once a Gnome update caused the hertz setting on my monitor to bug out and cause a black screen.
None of it was really traumatizing though, and I have my system set to run a DNF update automatically on every login since I like to run as up to date as possible, and generally trust the packages won’t be overly buggy by the time they get pushed live.
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After looking at your profile I realize you probably already are familiar with the philosophical differences of the two. Leaving the above for the potential benefit of anyone else who isn’t familiar.
Recently, I switched to Linux from Windows and it has been a good experience so far. I went with POPos because of how they integrated steam and the video drivers into the distro. It works great except shit breaks like booting and other things some times when they release major updates. I actually really like way Arch is designed. I was thinking of switching to Manjaro for stability reasons and I dont want to rip my hair out trying to get gaming to work in other distros. Im really looking for release stability with the ability to keep my gaming environment working. Any suggestions?
Personally I have separate gaming and Linux machines because I play games with Windows-specific anti-cheats.
If you've got an Nvidia card, then I have no experience with that on Arch, but here's the docs on Nvidia installation, it's easy: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA
Linux Mint could also be a good alternative option. It has easy Nvidia drivers installation as well.
With bleeding edge comes instability though, so it's not all up-side. Personally, I've settled on Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite, which is an immutable version of Fedora. Basically, it gives me the best of both worlds: up-to-date software and stability. Since the system is immutable, it's really difficult to break it even if you try.
Another good, non-IBM alternative to that is OpenSuse Aeon/Kalpa/MicroOS. Or just Tumbleweed/Leap if you don't care about immutability.
This was the case with older versions of Debian, but these days it is quite nice.
Yes, it was my favourite one during the Mandrake days, mostly because of KDE and being compiled for i586.
Nowadays I just stick with Ubuntu on VMs, and whatever is the default install on cloud.
Just thought I'd chime in, given that there's over a 100 distros, this topic is going to get long plenty quick.