I would go Debian for stability.

I like fedora since it updates a little more frequently than Debian, but it isn’t a full on rolling release. I used opensuse tumbleweed for a while and it broke on me several times.

I also used arch for a while, but I’m a dad to young children and I just don’t have the time to fuck around with my OS anymore. When I have time to work on my personal dev projects, I just want to drop into tmux, launch neovim and go. After some distro hopping I landed on Fedora with KDE for my desktop and gnome on my laptop. I also have an old netbook running antix with iceWM and an old thinkpad running fedora i3. The latter 2 machines are my hard focus machines.

If you want stability, you probably can't beat Debian, and you should be fairly used to the backend by now. I suspect the stylus use is just going to be figuring out what package provided your current access to it.

Before you wipe the laptop, I would recommend finding a command to list all the installed packages, then at least you'll have a reference to what was in place before. And if possible, maybe grab a backup of the /etc folder (or whatever might still be accessible) so you can reference the current configs on various packages to recreate whatever doesn't work by default.

There are a number of lightweight desktops you can choose from. I personally like Mate, but maybe you can play around with others on the new system and purge the ones you don't like. And while you're swapping drives, check the memory slots, maybe you can drop another 8GB stick in there to give the whole system a boost.

I recently installed Fedora on my own 2-in-1 flippy laptop, and it works well. The screen rotates when I rotate the device, touchscreen works, and the stylus works as well.

I have a Lenovo Flex with Aurora, which is a version of Fedora Atomic with "batteries installed" (nonfree libraries included) and a KDE desktop.

If you prefer Gnome that version is Bluefin.

The advantage of an atomic/immutable distro is that it's effectively impossible to break, but you can't tinker with the internals like you would a regular distro. And that's still with fresh packages hot from the oven about once a week.

Debian proper. You'll have issues with any stylus on Linux. Not to say it won't work but may need more effort to get working.

There's no big difference between ubuntu, mint or debian. I am not sure why people try to sell it to you.

Look up if fedora silverblue supports your stylus. Create a live image and test it. If it works, install it. If not fedora, then opensuse aeon.

Debian. You'll have the same (amazing) package manager without the extra ubuntu stuff. Find a desktop manager that supports the stylus (I assume Gnome and KDE Plasma both will support it).

Just make sure to enable non-free packages.

I just went through this. LMDE: Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s Mint without Ubuntu and it’s pretty great.

+1 for stability in Debian. My main driver is usually LMDE.

Debian works fine. Post your model number.

For that style of laptops give aurora a try, its basically fedora, but polished for ultralights. I have a surface pro from 2018, still works great, had a harder time with other distros. Good luck.

Mint.

It sounds like anything with KDE Plasma will make you happy. If the underlying OS has been fine with you, then try Kubuntu. If you want a non-Ubuntu system, try openSuse or Fedora.

Fedora Workstation

Zorin maybe, idk

Arch Linux!

Fedora Kinoite / Silverblue,Xubuntu / Linux Lite / Zorin OS Lite,KDE Neon / Kubuntu,Arch + KDE / Arch + Sway or Hyprland. Wacom / Synaptics / AES стилусы — как правило, распознаются ядром Linux. KDE — даёт профили для стилуса, нажатие, кнопки, чувствительность. Gnome (на Wayland) — распознаёт стилусы, но с меньшей настраиваемостью.

I've had a good experience using PopOS on a folding stylus-having laptop

Linux Mint?

gentoo?

I was on Ubuntu for years but the Snaps annoyed me and I was looking for alternatives so I went to Fedora (Bazzite). Couldn't be happier. I installed Bluefin on my laptop (slightly different flavor) and that's been nice too, although some things don't work as seamlessly as I think it should.

I would suggest Arch with KDE plasma, I don't have a stylus so can't vouch for it personally but I've seen it mentioned in the update notes alot.

Fedora Kinoite / Silverblue,Xubuntu / Linux Lite / Zorin OS Lite,KDE Neon / Kubuntu, Arch + KDE / Arch + Sway or Hyprland. Wacom / Synaptics / AES styluses - usually recognized by the Linux kernel. KDE - provides profiles for stylus, pressure, buttons, sensitivity. Gnome (on Wayland) - recognizes styluses, but with less customization.

I have a 2-in-1 laptop that folds with a touchscreen and Debian has been good for me. Sometimes I have to toggle the auto-rotate on the screen on and off to get it to work again but I doubt that issue is Debian specific. I don't know about a stylus but even if Debian doesn't include drivers for it, installing proprietary drivers manually isn't that bad.

My specs are worse than yours and it runs fine for productivity stuff. I use it for writing, spreadsheets, some web tools, and notes / references while running tabletop games.