Looking for some suggestions, preferably with existing tested compatibility with the Framework laptop hardware so I can do more well rounded research. I’m the most familiar with Ubuntu and CentOS. Picked Ubuntu initially for mid 2000s nostalgia purposes but it’s time to move on.
EDIT: As some people have pointed out, “more privacy oriented” was probably not the best phrase to use here. I am looking to move off of a Linux OS with corporate sponsorship and also looking forward to exploring Linux OSes that are privacy focused.
I’m curious what you mean by getting hands dirty with system maintenance on Arch. Granted, I have been using Linux and Unix systems at this point longer than many people on here have been alive… but after a year of running Arch on my new laptop, it’s been pretty un-messy. The messy part is really the setup since you have to pick each and every piece, but if you search just about any issue and include “arch Linux” on DDG, the answer is almost always one of the top 5 results and the Archwiki is hands down some of the best Linux documentation currently available.
It’s not that much work honestly. Like in May when arch was migrating to git you had to manually update your pacman config to remove the community repo, if you didn’t do it at some point there’d be a risk of having a broken system. It was a simple change, basically removing a few lines from the config, but keeping up with arch “news” and sometimes having to do something simple is more than a lot of people are willing to do.