Same as Debian since Bookworm (12). Nonfree firmware comes in the installation files now, so you can opt in or out at that stage and not have to scramble if you forgot.
Do what I do. “Oh shoot, Jellyfin stopped, now I have to remember how to tell Arch to clear out its cached packages” (it’s pacman -sc if you’re me and you’re reading this in the future)
Canonical has a long history of thinking it knows better than you, but funneling everyone into their closed-source walled-garden our-way-or-the-highway gonna-charge-money-the-moment-we-figure-out-the-legality Snap Store sure if the most Microsofty.
I’m a fan of the old IBM ThinkPads. Not sure about the recent ones.
I’ve had huge problems with one of Lenovo’s Legion laptops. Awful support too, they did everything they could to not have to fix it. It took a licensed third party to finally take us seriously and fix the dang thing.
So I wouldn’t recommend Lenovo unless the only alternative was Dell.
Nearly all Ubuntu instructions also apply to Debian.
Flatpak is no longer default on Ubuntu since they see it as competition.
As of Debian Bookworm, nonfree firmware is available on the installation media and no further steps are involved.
Ubuntu used to be the most friendly beginner experience. I’m not sure if it has any advantage over Debian today.
Intel and AMD drivers are part of the Linux kernel so you never need to think about drivers.
Check out https://www.protondb.com/ for something of a list of supported games, but generally most games just work (in Steam, go to Settings, Compatibility, and check the box for applying Proton on all games in library and not just the officially supported ones).
ProtonDB isn’t a complete list, but if you do struggle with getting a game to work, chances are somebody has posted a string you can paste into Steam to make the game magically work.