Linux

Nobara (which is Fedora but enhanced for gaming and streaming) or Debian/Debian testing or Mint

PopOS or Endeavor

Pop os or mint

I recommend Linux Mint. It comes with good default settings but is configurable. The Cinnamon DE is exactly like that of Windows, so you don't need a lot of effort to start using it. Mint comes with some pre-installed apps like Firefox and LibreOffice, but they may not be the latest versions, so you can purge them afterwards and reinstall through one of the package managers.

Speaking of which, Mint comes with APT and Flatpak as package managers, but Snap is disabled by default. You can enable it, if you want to.

Mint does not come with any gaming apps pre-installed, but Steam can be installed, and many games work on it, especially those that are verified to work on the Steam Deck. Lutris is another game app you can install, and that allows you access to other game platforms like Blizzard, but don't assume that all games will work perfectly through Lutris.

Given your background it should come to no surprise that it doesn't really matter much.

That said, I recommend Arch with some caveats, mainly with regards to the "very little effort to start using" requirement. If you know how to follow instructions, it should only be about 30-45 minutes to install it. It will on the other hand fit your other requirements of good defaults and not shipping with loads of applications. When you install an app you will get that app and nothing else, and the defaults will either be exactly what the upstream defaults would be if you built it yourself or something very close to that. You also have everything available through the AUR, and after using it for years I've yet to run into an update not going smoothly.

Personally, I found Arch to be difficult to get installed. I'm ok with command line stuff once everything is all setup, but having to use it for the installation process is something I found to be too easy to screw up and too time consuming overall. Also, I haven't seen any drop of vanilla Arch with a GUI installer. For the Arch experience, I generally go with EndeavourOS since it's easy to install, gives you lots of options for the window manager, and is easy to use once you get it up and running.

If you'd prefer the Debian environment, I think anything from Debian or any of its derivatives (Ubuntu et al) would be a decent choice. My favorite is Linux Mint. I've seen a lot of people describe it like "entry-level" Linux, but it's very capable and user friendly. It's where I tend to spend most of my time when running Linux and I would say usually requires the least setup since it typically just works out of the box.

There's also OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if you feel like going a somewhat different direction. I get more "traditional Linux" vibes from OpenSUSE, but packaged up in a user friendly manner. I play around with it from time to time in a VM, mostly when I want to test out some new server package locally. But, that said, it's still capable of handling anything else I throw at it, so it's fun to use all the same.

You can skip this comment if you're avoiding anything arch-based; I don't have any additional distro suggestions beyond what's already listed (they really are mostly the same), but in regard to the arch-based suggestions, I would only add that you can reduce the maintenance by choosing a DE with a slower update cycle (e.g. XFCE or any WM) and, more importantly, remembering that you don't actually have to update your system every day. Even once a month is probably fine. I don't get the impression you want vanilla Arch though; Endeavor or even Manjaro minimal will have the defaults you're looking for, or literally any other non-Arch distro if the AUR isn't important to you.

Linux Mint

You make it sound like all distros are paid, not free. With that said... all distros can deliver the same quality as you'd expect out of a "stable OS". Still, theres Nobara, Linux Mint, ZorinOS and Garuda for your "noob-friendly" needs.

So its not really a distro, but what i do on my laptop is installed rocky 9 linux and use distrobox for installing applications. Rocky is Based on Rhel, its lts is good till 2039 and is super stable

I would avoid Ubuntu and Fedora because of their corporate shenanigans. I've had a very painless experience with Pop!_OS as my daily driver and there's a version that comes with Nvidia support already baked in. Otherwise, I would recommend Mint D which is the version that ditched Ubuntu for pure Debían (what Ubuntu is a fork of).

Your post screams of Debian.

I did the classic, jump in at the deep end approach, and ended up with some distro hoping for a while. I then settled on Fedora.

Why? It did everything I wanted to do and did it well. I found some distro so easy to setup but harder to maintain, some really slick but problematic with updates and apps. Fedora, for me, just worked.

All that said, there are various factors to consider, including your hardware configuration. Some distro just happen to work better on some hardware specs, especially when considering your graphics.

I have a similar usage to you, covering a little bit of everything including gaming and dev and, so far, everything continues to work. So much so, I am thinking of switching my gaming rig over to Fedora in the coming weeks.

Linux mint

Fedora is a great distro

"highly configurable" and "very little effort to start using" don't blend together in car mechanics, and they don't in Linux either.

I was going to suggest Gentoo or Arch because they're the standard for "highly configurable" but they really demand some effort to start using them.

Also, so far, only Debian really, really, cares about open source, most distros don't mind copyrighted video codecs or proprietary GPU drivers if they make the user's life easier.

Void fits the bill. Debian if you don't want rolling.

arch is super stable ( for the most part ) at with the arch install script it's easier than ever to install, endeavouros is a gui installer but leaves you with basically an arch system

ive been running arch on my desktop and laptop for years and the only issue I had was that fucked up grub change that somehow got thru

I have to agree with most people, arch is probably the way to go.

But given the subject I'm gonna piggy back on you and ask about KDE Neon. This is what got me back into desktop Linux after installing it on an old crappy tablet.

Now i currently run it on a couple older but upgraded AIOs and even my server that primarily does VMs.

If i understand it's a little more bleeding edge than people would normally like but I'm curious the community thoughts on it as i don't hear much. Am I missing out not running arch or mint?

You want Xerolinux. Ships with little, already configured and with beautiful looks, arch based.

LMDE