@ArmouredWizard yep, not perfect. This is referring to the package manager usage, which for the record, I would recommend using; they're a lot more convenient and secure than manual installation.

That said, pretty much any distro will support downloading binaries directly off the web, as well as appimages, flatpaks, and .deb files which are just various other genders of application, however these will likely have varying degrees of annoyances to them, as for the most part, they're not the intended mode of package installation; the package manager is. (apt, dnf, pacman, nix, etc...)

Ignore the systemd thing, it's frankly a little stupid that it's there, as if you know what systemd is, let alone don't want to use it, you don't need to be told which linux distro to use. People have opinions on systemd, and correct or not, the amount of infrastructure and support built around systemd makes it basically necessary for anyone who just wants their pc to work and to find solid help if something goes wrong.

@ArmouredWizard back when I was on mint, I just maintained my own Godot installation as I wanted to be as up to date as possible on it; I'd just install the binary off the website & modify the Godot desktop file to point to the new version. Not ideal, but it worked haha.

I'd say just try a few desktop environments out to see what you like, then. I'd recommend setting up a bootable media with ventoy and putting a few ISOs on there.

@ArmouredWizard Mint or Fedora. Mint will have older packages due to the Debian base but will be more stable as a result. If you like the windows desktop environment, mint's cinnamon will be very similar to that.

If you like messing around with different desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, or something more esoteric like Niri+DMS or Sway) or want newer packages than mint, fedora would be my recommendation. It's still quite stable and has a large community if you're looking for resources.

If you really want up to date packages, there are quite a few arch-based distros like Manjaro and Cachy that provide a more user friendly experience on top of arch, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend them over more stable alternatives, unless you really want to get into the nuts and bolts. Arch's rolling release is really good for up to date software and drivers but also really sucks when you need to update your system and something breaks.