I have tried out many distros and have shortlisted, Fedora, Garuda, Nobara and NixOS, all with GNOME (it looks pleasing). I am a newbie and have heard that NixOS requires knowledge of terminals but I am fine with that. This would be my main laptop. I play games like RDR 2, Genshin Impact and Assetto Corsa and also some on emulators like Pokemon Emerald. I also need to be able to run Solidworks, MATLAB and possibly Ansys. I also code in Python, Java and am learning C and plan to learn Assembly. I am also recently interested in AI art and have dabbles in Automatic1111. This is basically all I use my laptop for. Which among the above would be better for me?
NixOs is an immutable distro, I’d rule it out because of the hassle it implies. Garuda is a rolling release, so I’d say a plus if you want latest features, a minus if you’re looking for reliability. From what I see (haven’t tried it though) Nobara is fedora with user friendly fixes… So I’d sayNobara. But a lot of it is based on preference (I’m daily driving kubuntu and using flatpak as a main software provider)