It looks nice, the specs are great, and I want one, but seriously... Nvidia? Why?

Oh, I care about Five (Seven, Nine) Eyes every bit as much as I care about China, I assure you. But in a thread about a Chinese company's new tech, it would be a bit weird to complain about NSA data mining. Kinda off topic, if you see what I mean.

As a recovering Abrams driver, this makes me giggle a little.

I'd like to help, but you said Fedora was "vaguely windowsey." I've used Fedora off and on for close to a decade, and I have no clue what you mean. Like, it's not at all windowsey in my experience.

So, in order to avoid what you're talking about in other distros, I'm going to need some more details… what do you mean by "windowsey"?

I went to college at 29. And it really doesn't matter how old you are, complaining about a younger generation makes you sound old.

Take it from a Gen Xer who's heard The Greatest, the Boomers, and my own generation do it 😁

Safely? Make a backup on an external drive. That's at least safe-ish. Not trying to be flippant, this is just the only way I know that would qualify as "safe".

My suggestion is to use a beginner distro with easy dual boot options. Linux Mint comes to mind. Get that going and try it out. If it works for you, you can then move on to ditching your Windows install and/or using a more advanced distro.

Unless you're more of a "dive into the deep end" sort. If that's the case, grab Fedora Workstation and make sure to enable the proprietary software repositories. Fedora is stable, and the desktop will be a reminder that this isn't Windows and it won't act like it. From there, you can find help all over the place, from Fedora's documentation and forums to simple internet searches.

Well, I passed out at a warehouse because my supervisor wouldn't let me go for a water break in 100+ degree weather, and I got fired for "loafing."

Does that count?

The out of date package problem you're running into is because Mint is based on the LTS version of Ubuntu. This means that it's set up for long term service and stability. All well and good if that's what you're after.

As to your problem, I'm not big on Endeavor - or any Arch based distro - for folks who are new to Linux. Unless you're willing to take the time to use Arch itself and set up your system, and learn how it all comes together, you're better off not using Arch. I know I'll get shouted down for this, but IMHO, all of the easy install Arch based distros are terrible for people new to linux.

If your biggest issue is that the software versions aren't as up to date as you'd like, then all you really need to do is switch to a non-LTS. I'd recommend Fedora. I use it myself, and it's easy to set up, works great out of the box, and is up to date. They come out with a new version twice a year, and upgrades run smoothly.

If you're really focused on a rolling release, though, I'd suggest looking at OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It's rolling, super stable, and has a fantastic community. Their Yast tools are famous and really impressive.

Alternately, take the time to install a proper Arch setup. You'll learn a ton, and find out that all that maintenance stuff you feel like you don't have time to do isn't that big a deal, really.

Holy crap, this is amazing! I mean, I kinda hate the XP UI (and the UE was worse lol), but if you loved it, good on you! This is fantastically close. Like, it's uncanny.

What do you mean? Arch doesn't have you "compiling everything". It's a mostly binary distribution. The Arch repositories are binary, and more than a few of the packages in the AUR are binary as well.

I'm also not following "not doing anything during and after install" - what do you mean by after install in that sentence?

I'd love to help, but I can't figure out what your issue is. If you're looking for something like Arch, but faster and easier to set up, try Endeavor - it's basically Arch with a graphical installer and some neat extra tools.

I'd also suggest looking in to Void, since you don't appear to be afraid of the command line. You'll find it similar in approach to Arch, but everything is binary packages; there's no compiling unless you grab dev tools and pull the source from Github or Codeberg or whatever yourself.

It's a GUI. That'd be the difference. It's the same tool for folks who aren't comfortable on the command line.

Like it or not, for wider adoption we need GUI solutions for things like this. You clearly don't need it, so don't install it. Problem solved.