I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are "mainstream" "beginner friendly" distros, right? I don't want anything too advanced, right?
Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had "no signal"). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.
Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I'm used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything "just work" flawlessly, but it's so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!
Credit where it's due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I'd never strayed from Gnome because I'm not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it's "simple" and "customizable" but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only "simple" in that it doesn't allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).
The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.
I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the "beginner" distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!
edit: i am DYING at the number of "you're using it wrong" comments here. never change people.
People generally recommend Debian-based distributions because they tend to be more popular, have more applications designed first and foremost to work on them, and tend to have the most community support because they are more popular.
This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my "old man distro" so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.
I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!
No shade from me though for going with Red Hat.
I've also found that the documentation online is much better, or at least easier to search, with Ubuntu in particular than any other distro. This is probably mostly due to popularity at this point as you said, but I think they got that popularity because of the straight forward and easy to digest documentation. And I'm not just talking about self-help support forums, I mean published and polished wikis and guides hosted by the distro itself.