There was another post yesterday about this and the community recommended Mint & Pop OS the most. However, I am not looking for windows-like. I want a new & fresh experience like using a smartphone for the first time or switching from ios to android.

While I get why Linux Mint (with the Cinnamon DE) is regarded as a Windows-like, Pop!_OS is far from that. Furthermore, going from iOS to Android is arguably a smaller change than going from Windows to any Linux DE (so even the Cinnamon DE (on any distro)). Regardless, the Desktop Environment is the single most influential part of a distro to how you experience any distro. Therefore, if you actually want a new & fresh experience, then you should definitely check out DEs like Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce^[1]^ on something like a Live USB (perhaps through the use of Ventoy). After you've experienced a bunch of DEs, you should have attained a better grasp of what you like and don't like.

Distrochooser.de recommended kubuntu to me.

While Distrochooser is cool and all, you shouldn't take it too seriously 😅. If possible, consider sharing your results on Distrochooser, that might at least provide us some pointers.

1. Too many to list actually 😅, and most of them shouldn't be of a concern to a new user (or have simply become mainstays on most distros). The most important 'block' would be the Desktop Environment, though. Furthermore, design choices like release model, independent/derivative, opinionated/blank slate, traditional/atomic etc and a distro's popularity are other important factors in making a decision; while we'd refer to none of them as "building blocks of a distro". However, if there are any "blocks" that you would describe as a hard-requirement for you, then it does make sense to look for a distro that meets those. For example, in my case; a configured SELinux and atomic upgrades^[2]^ are required. As such, the decision already boils down to like two distros 😅. The shopping experience approach would perhaps make more sense if you chose a distro with little to no defaults (à la Arch (or Gentoo^[3]^)). Finally, perhaps it's worth noting that ((Dynamic) Tiling) Window Managers' capability of leaving you in awe for the opportunities and possibilities they provide are more substantial. Thankfully, while not as feature-rich, the more established DEs do offer means to engage with (dynamic) tiling (through extensions/add-ons).
2. That's hard to find; obviously distros won't advertise what they're missing. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they have good reasons for their respective design choices. Still, FWIW, resources like these might be helpful to some. However, you should only look at the tables, the texts found above the tables are at best outdated and perhaps even misleading otherwise. Beyond that, if you narrow the choice between just a couple of distros, then I'm sure the community would be more than willing to point you toward their differences.
3. Software I would recommend to anyone would be:
   • Distrobox; this excellent piece of software has single-handedly solved package availability across the Linux landscape. Other excellent endeavors like AppImage, Flatpak, Nix and Snap definitely have their uses and are in some aspects superior; but Distrobox' ease of use (contrary to Nix) and (almost) boundless access to packages (contrary to AppImage, Flatpak and Snap) on top of how well it integrates with the rest of your system makes it my personal MVP.
   • Flatseal; must-have if you ever plan on using flatpaks (which you definitely should consider).
4. It depends entirely on the distro you install. Assuming that you start using a distro with sane defaults (like most new users do), then unless you're using an Nvidia GPU^[4]^ (or other hardware known for causing troubles), you can start using your system however you'd like it; which for most would consist of installing the software they need. Furthermore, concerns related to bloat are a lot less significant/severe on Linux, so you should be fine unless you think the default installed file manager is bloat...
5. I actually don't know. Perhaps it might be related to creating an as homogeneous experience as possible; apps on Linux either rely on GTK or QT for their appearance/looks etc. Therefore, by foregoing one, the 'awkward' 'out-of-place'-experience that some might experience every so often would have been overcome. But this is a rare concern (I'd say). So unless you're very into how your system looks and feels, it shouldn't be a concern to you.
6. I think these questions show that you've put some thought into this and that by itself is already very commendable. And I'm actually of the opinion that asking these questions, especially for someone like you, is important. So I would definitely encourage you to continue with asking relevant questions in hopes of making the transition to Linux as pleasant as possible. As for the distros you've mentioned, chances are high that you'd be content with either one of them. However, I wonder if you're making a conscious choice; like would you be able to state why any of these should be preferred on the basis of merit rather than popular vote^[5]^ or what happened to come out of Distrochooser.

1. Important distinction: these aren't selected for how different they operate/behave compared to Windows(/macOS) but for being some of the more polished DEs found on Linux. For a more exhaustive list, refer to the one found on the ArchWiki; which still happens to miss DEs like Kera 😅.
2. I wouldn't call atomic upgrades a building block as it's ultimately a design choice.
3. Gentoo is a great distro, but I would not recommend a new user to engage with it; unless you believe you belong to the sub 1% that can make it work as their first distro. Heck, even Arch is often discouraged to new users. Though I think that Arch might be just up your alley; at least if you enjoy reading the excellent ArchWiki.
4. In which case, either the installer provided by the distro got your back and the proprietary drivers are installed or you're required to install them yourself. Steps related to these are different per distro, but reading up on your chosen distro's documentation should be sufficient.
5. Don't get me wrong; I'm not dismissing the popular vote.

tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.

Yup, clearly. /s

The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule

Wow, that's a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.

the hardware is “fine” at best

Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple's finest go beyond "fine".

I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.

Hmm..., very interesting! I'm totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.

Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.

I don't deny this. However, none of Dell's laptops with decent Linux support have an AMD CPU (or one of Intel's latest Meteor Lake CPUs). Thus, at least in terms of battery life, it's not desirable; with battery life being something that OP has explicitly mentioned. As for Lenovo, the Thinkpad-line (the one generally recommended for its Linux-support) with AMD CPUs starts at a very high price. At which point, the "fine" hardware from the Linux-first vendor not only starts to be attractive but highly desirable by comparison.

Username checks out

If you want to use Linux on your laptop, is there any reason not to go for 'dedicated' Linux laptops?

FWIW, I haven't seen these Linux-first vendors being mentioned under your post yet: NovaCustom and Star Labs.

virtualization

Honestly, I don't know. Though, I'd reckon there would be any significant difference between distros.

stability

Depends on what you mean with stability. If you meant it like how "stable" is used in "Debian stable", then it would be any distro with a release cycle that chooses to not continuously deliver packages; but instead chooses to freeze packages and hold off updates (besides those related to security) for the sake of offering a relatively polished experience in which the behavior of the distro is relatively predictable. Some distros that score good on this would be Debian stable and openSUSE Leap. It's worth noting that Distrobox, Flatpak and Nix allow one to have newer packages on these systems if desired.

If, instead, you meant that the distro is less likely to break upon an update, then it's important to note the following:

• While you shouldn't expect breakage to happen in the first place, unfortunately it's realistic to expect it every so often (read: 0-2 times a year on non-stable distros).
• If you have a lot of packages, then it's more likely that at least one of them causes some breakage.
• Technically, every update is a potential 'breakage-moment'.
• Packages that haven't been installed through the official/native repos are more likely to cause breakage.
• Relying on Distrobox, Flatpak and Nix for (at least some of) your packages should benefit the stability of your base system.
• (GRUB-)Btrfs+Timeshift/Snapper allows one to create snapshots one can easily rollback to in case of breakage. Therefore it's worth seeking out a distro that configures this by default or set it up yourself on whichever distro you end up using (if it isn't included by default).
• So-called 'atomic'^[1]^ distros are (generally speaking) more resistant to breakage, but (arguably) they're less straightforward compared to traditional distros. It's still worth considering if you're adventurous or if your setup is relatively simple and you don't really feel the need to tinker a lot. Don't get me wrong; these atomic distros should be able to satiate ones customization needs, it's just that it might not be as straightforward to accomplish this. Which, at times, might merely be blamed on lackluster documentation more than anything else.^[2]^

As for recommendations you shouldn't look beyond unadulterated distros like (Arch^[3]^), Debian, Fedora, openSUSE (and Ubuntu^[4]^). These are (in almost all cases^[5]^) more polished than their respective derivatives.

speed

Most of the distros mentioned in this comment should perform close enough to one another that it shouldn't matter in most cases.

If you're still lost, then just pick Linux Mint and call it a day.

1. More commonly referred to as 'immutable'. Atomic, however, is in most cases a better name.
2. If you're still interested, I'd recommend Fedora Silverblue for newcomers and NixOS for those that actually know what they're getting into.
3. I believe that one should be able to engage with Arch as long as they educate themselves on the excellent ArchWiki. It might not be for everyone, though. Furthermore, its installation (even with archinstall) might be too much for a complete newbie if they haven't seen a video guide on it.
4. Ubuntu is interesting. It has some strange quirks due to its over-reliance on Snap. But it's worth mentioning, if you don't feel like tinkering.
5. With Linux Mint (and Pop!_OS) being the clear exception(s).

I'll assume that you intend to use it as a traditional daily driver, as such Tails and Whonix will not be taken into consideration. Qubes OS will also be dismissed as it's technically not a Linux distro. Though, it's simply the best if you take security seriously.

Within the space of traditional Linux distros, the closest one would probably be Kicksecure. Madaidan even works on the distro, so I'd say it's fair to assume that it upholds some of the values that are mentioned in the article.

Alternatively, packages for Fedora that would set this up automatically

Hehe, wishful thinking 😂. Uhmm..., bummer, but such a thing simply does not exist. Best we've got would be relying on so-called hardening scripts made by people that you don't know but somehow trust for hardening your system. Honestly, I'm also -to a degree- guilty of this as I one day hope to either adopt these scripts or rebase to one of these hardened 'immutable' Fedora images (when they're ready); Madaidan's guidelines have actually been an initial inspiration for the scripts found in the first link, so yeah 🙂. Until then, our best bet would probably be relying on hardening guides like this one; the guide has been carefully written (and is still getting regularly updated) with consideration for all the different major distros one might be using. Alternatively, you might try to implement Madaidan's guidelines directly. But, my previous attempts on Fedora didn't bear the best results. Though your mileage may vary. Special shout out to Brace as it's the closest thing to a package that does the hardening for you and works on multiple distros including Fedora. It's maintained by the same people that have brought us the excellent DivestOS, so it's trustworthy.

Why does Linux do that’s “better” than Windows? That’s not meant to inflame anyone. More so what do you personally like better.

Linux offers me freedom and control over my systems far beyond Windows (or any proprietary OS for that matter) does. This allows me to:

• Setup a system of which its parts have been deliberately chosen by yours truly to satisfy my particular needs and my needs only. And I can make it obey whatever I will. It won't do a thing I didn't require of it, nor will it overrule any of my configs at a later point in time.

• Not have any spyware injected by the OS. Thus offering actually good privacy by default (for a change).

• More 'modern' ways of maintaining a system are only properly supported on Linux. Fully declarative systems like NixOS/Guix have yet to show up for other OSes. Furthermore, while the likes of Android, iOS and macOS do have 'immutability' (at least) sprinkled to them. Windows has yet to show the capabilities of their CorePC. One might even argue that it's uncertain if it will come out in the near future as CoreOS (10X) didn't see the light of day either. Linux, on the other hand, offers a plethora of 'immutable' distros that should suit ones needs regardless.

What can I expect to find as a casual observer?

Perhaps not much of it honestly 😅. Sure, you should find a gratis system that just works and doesn't hoard your data. Updates go smoother, it'll have improved performance on older devices. And if you actually know what you're doing, then it'll have better performance on your newer devices as well. Installing software is just one command away by default. But some of the more advanced benefits might rely on a more profound understanding, which you may or may not be interested to indulge yourself with.

Becase of that and your recommendation I will probably switch to silverblue.

Silverblue is incidentally also my daily-driver; custom image through uBlue's template to be more precise*.

Im a little scared of selinux (I was thinkering too much with fedora) but better with it than without.

Yup, SELinux is definitely a double-edged sword in that it's very powerful but can therefore be a bit more restrictive. Though, currently it's our only bet when it comes to confining containers as it's (vastly) superior over AppArmor in that aspect. Which explains openSUSE's recent conversion from AppArmor to SELinux for their distros that rely heavily on container workflows; like MicroOS, Aeon, Kalpa etc. Unfortunately it's not the easiest to understand, but I'm sure you'll manage 😉!

For AUR apps I will use distrobox.

Hehe, you know what's good 😛.

Due to legal reasons, Fedora is not able to distribute their distro with everything baked in to ensure (close to) maximum functionality out of the box. Notoriously, codecs required for (some of the) hardware acceleration and enabling the use of some multimedia file types are not delivered out of the box. Therefore, users are required to set those up themselves. Thankfully, RPM Fusion steps in to the rescue and makes it a lot easier for the end user to acquire these nonetheless.

But..., what if retroactively Fedora is forced to remove even more stuff and what if the solution is not directly available on RPM Fusion and thus requires (advanced) manual intervention in order to resolve the problem for the end user? Which actually happened just a few months ago with the mesa drivers*. Or what if a new Nvidia update causes troubles and you can't boot into your system? Which actually happens once every often if you don't pay attention and/or are unlucky. These are real problems that require real solutions; solutions which Fedora can't offer in the most elegant way in fear of the court (rightfully so).

This is where the "batteries included"" expression comes in. The aforementioned two problems were nonexistent on images provided by uBlue. Because problematic images are hold back by default automatically, which cautions them to resolve it ASAP and within a day (so far) the workaround gets built-in to the image and the end-user just gets the solution without ever noticing that something was wrong in the first place. Why? Because the end user's system never got the update without the workaround in the first place. An interaction unique as such within the Linux space is simply unheard of. I'm only aware of Vanillas OS that might be able to pull off something similar in the near future. Which is why I'm also very excited to see how it develops. Furthermore, as the end user you never had to go to the RPM fusion page in the first place to get/set up the earlier mentioned codecs as they were actually built-in to the image by default. That, is also part of the "batteries included" expression.

If you're interested, please consider checking out their documentation. Furthermore, please feel to inquire, if you so desire 😉 !

Somehow it looks veiny, black and kinda nsfw...

I agree that having better GUI is a generally good thing and that most of us would benefit from it. However it's false to state or believe that Linux in its totality is bereft of this. Distros like openSUSE, MX Linux and Garuda Linux have put in considerable effort into offering tools that enable one to config a lot of stuff through a GUI. However, it doesn't make a lot of sense to complain about the lack of GUIs if you (or whosoever for that matter) don't use one of these distros. Arch has minimalism as one of its design goals, so you either have to find the binaries/apps/packages (or whatsoever) that allow you to config through a GUI or you're out of luck.

First of all, I think it's important to state that the 'default' settings that distros ship with and thus you're met with right after a fresh installation try to target a sweet spot in which a lot more besides performance is considered; reliability, security, stability etc. However, depending on your workload and your hardware configuration, it's possible to have it more optimized towards performance through 'tinkering-means'.

However workload, metrics, system and hardware configuration provide so much variability that an exhaustive comparison between distros is just hard to do right. It's possible to find some on Phoronix (and ~~Reddit~~), but testing it yourself on your own hardware is a lot more valuable.

Still, it's possible to draw some basic conclusions based on the available data and common sense:

• Newer versions of the kernel generally have optimizations related to performance, especially for newer hardware. So -for performance sake- it makes sense to pick a distro that always tries to stay as close as possible to the latest kernel release.

• Overhead is in almost all cases detrimental to performance, so more minimal systems seem to score better. A lot of distros offer an ISO that's meant for minimal installations, so those are perhaps worth checking out.

• Compiling yourself (with performance optimizations) or using packages that have been compiled with performance optimizations in mind provide significant improvements that might be worth your time.

Beyond these three it becomes very murky, real quick. I guess (custom) kernel patches/optimizations are worth a mention, but you would have to benchmark it yourself on your own hardware to see if they're even worth the hassle (spoiler alert: some of them should, but it's best to stay objective and without any expectations regarding them).

I'd like to end this with naming some distros that might be worth mentioning in this discussion: Arch, CachyOS, Clear Linux, Garuda, Gentoo, Nobara and PikaOS.