• +1 for ventoy - easy way to explore the look and feel of different options before committing. You can boot from the drive without a full install and then reboot to run another image.

• didn’t see it mentioned but Asahi Linux is a project for running Linux on supported mac hardware. Could keep your Mac hardware running for you for a long while.

• 2 cents on distros: cachyOS with KDE desktop is a pretty snappy and easy entry point with a lot of fun development happening currently. As others noted, it’s all personal preference tho.

CachyOS is great! Fast & easy.