This will sound like heresy to some, but get away from the bleeding edge. You probably don’t need the absolute latest version of every little thing. It can feel cool knowing you know how to fix a borked install but actually having to do so sucks. Dump the hype and get to something stable for your daily driver. If you want to experiment, do it on another drive/machine. Building a custom rocketship is cool, but you should probably build it without breaking the truck you use to go get parts.

I was gonna say the same thing.

For most beginners who just want their PC to work, the obvious choice should be Mint for older hardware, and Universal Blue’s Fedora-based images (Bluefin or Aurora depending on the preferred desktop).

Of course, since OP mentioned NixOS that is an option as well. But it should be the stable version, and it is not beginner friendly like the other two.