Don't know ya but hope you're alright :¦

Have distro hopped over the years - most recently Manjaro to Fedora to Endeavour, but haven't found the one that's quite perfect for me.
That said, I'd make a few recommendations based on the person I'd be "marketing" to:

1. New to Linux, looking for polish: Mint
   Mint is built off the well-known Ubuntu, polished a step further. It's in my experience the simplest to use and most generally polished of the Linux offerings. The community generally isn't as catered to power users, but if you care more about your time than about customization, I'd recommend Mint.

2. Looking for Stable/Modern, willing to jump thru a few hoops: Fedora
   Fedora has come a long way over the years. It's far more stable, polished, and accessible than ever before. I'd hazard to call it my top recommendation, BUT, third-party software management and installation can be something of a nightmare. COPR is approximately equivalent to the AUR of Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch below, but at this time very obtuse and difficult to learn or work with. Some day you'll want a package that exists in COPR, and that day won't be fun for you.

3. Need apps you can't find anywhere else: Endeavour/Manjaro
   Forget bleeding-edge packages and rolling release - the Arch User Repository (AUR) is hands-down the greatest feature on offer from Arch-based distros. The AUR is a repository of packages created by users that aren't supported by the main repos. If ever there's a time you need a piece of software and you can't find it anywhere else, the AUR's your best bet.
   That said, I found/find both Manjaro and now Endeavour to be a little rough around the edges, and the consequence of rolling-release and bleeding-edge software is a system that isn't always working just right.

4. Looking to learn, straight into the frying pan: Arch
   Same benefits and drawbacks of Endeavour/Manjaro above, but if you want to set up your system service-by-service, as lean as you want, Arch is there for you. A great experience if you just need an excuse to "try" putting an OS together piece by piece, even if you don't ultimately keep it in the long run.

Desktop Environments
The great DE debate. Nobody can tell you what's right and wrong here, but I have a few general breakdowns of the "big three".
GNOME: If simplicity and elegance is your style. You sacrifice customization potential for cohesion and polish.
KDE: Modern. Powerful. Usually polished out the gate. Can be a bit much if you're trying to tweak it tho. My personal choice.
XFCE: Less modern, more friendly to lower-end systems.

Whelp that's it from me, hope it helps!

Connect is the primary reason I find myself stuck to KDE
Don't get me wrong Gnome is great after a few tweaks, but it's not KDE Connect great. Sharing files phone-pc, sms (buggy, but still handy) - love it.

I had fedora installed the last few years, and was digging flatpak.... until I wasn't. One day I ran out of disk space - 230 Gb of flatpak dependencies. I run a pretty slim system, so what the actual heck? Did some research, learned how to flush cached and redundant packages, shrunk my flatpak deps to.... 150 Gb

I've since been trying Endeavor

Played on the GBA many years ago. Weirdly I have not been able to appreciate a jrpg before or since, for whatever that means. Great style, great music, I recall a fun story but maybe that's just the rose glasses. If you have a hankering to try it is say go for it.

It was likely the build up of a few years' packages, updates, and so on, but it eventually came to a head and I had to wipe and load. Maybe it's better now, but I think I started that install around Fedora 34? So not too long ago

I'm so happy you're here 😭