We're on a tech forum, where people probably need less handholding with tech gear than the general public does.

And, once no longer a newb, Debian is easily one of the best distros to be in, for many purposes, long-term.

Why not start with one of the most popular and principled distros, and see whether it just works for you?

From there, if your eye ever starts wandering towards some strange other distro, you have a well-informed good baseline to compare against.

To be perfectly honest, anyone approaching Linux from Windows needs caveats so that they can make their mind up for themselves and pick what's best for them. Every distro (and Linux as a whole) has trade offs and things that will need to be considered.

> We're on a tech forum, where people probably need less handholding with tech gear than the general public does.

I'm not sure about that. I think the days of assuming people who can code or do another specialized tech sill are long over.

The amount of comments from people who prefer windows or mac or ubuntu and systemd because of convenience and abstraction (i.e. handholding) are plentiful.

Debian runs systemd. How does a preference for systemd make Debian a bad recommendation?

I didn't say a preference for systemd makes $SYSTEMD-USING-DISTRO a bad recommendation.

Anyone familiar with desktop Linux enough to advocate for its use is so disconnected from the experience for a newcomer that they should never ever ever be trusted.

Anyone who can perform the arcane incantations and rituals required to uninstall, disable, defuse, and circumvent all the user hostile anti-features ( which are only increasing in number by the way ) will do just fine with Linux in my honest opinion.