I've personally tried some of those. Ubuntu simply works. I hate most of their defaults, most add bugs, Ubuntu is what most cloud providers use if you're a dev, every software provider targets Ubuntu if they target Linux, and so on.

You can install Ubuntu and it'll work. Easy. No other distro I've tried (Fedora, Suse, Manjaro, Mint, Mageia) is as easy.

I know we're just sharing anecdotes, but I dropped Ubuntu during the "Megalomaniacal Shuttleworth" days, and I still don't accept his vision for Ubuntu.

If you remember the earliest builds, they included a video of Nelson Mandela explaining ubuntu and implied it as a light, legally unencumbered OS for the world. I was helping build labs in East Africa at the time, and it was a fantastic choice for running scientific operations because of its relative UI cohesion and simplicity over Debian while allowing access to its vast repositories and package groups.

I kind of lost all faith when the power trips started happening across the GNOME Foundation and elsewhere and moved to less divisively ambitious distros that were more responsive to their users.

I've never had issues installing or using Linux on hardware I picked, but I understand the struggles of working around non-spec and proprietary chipsets without drivers. I don't use non-free drivers in most cases, so having hardware that doesn't struggle with them is paramount.

I've had driver issues with things like arch and debian. I maybe enjoyed digging into that a decade ago. I don't anymore.

Mint and Pop are still Ubuntu based, not to ignore the Debian underpinnings of Ubuntu.

I've stuck with xUbuntu because it seems to be the most sane of the bunch when it comes to defaults and preinstalled software. Once installed, it does a good job of staying out of my way UI wise.

Mint and Pop are Ubuntu based

For me, because Ubuntu just works for everything I need it to. So I have not found the need to try a different distro.