@mintycactus NixOS can install to your hard drive. I have it on my laptop and it runs beautifully. I have issues with Gnome and their insistence on removing things like remembering window size and positions, and recently making it so hard to theme, but I am sure these will iron out with time.
My plasma desktop, however, is my favorite. Once I got it where I wanted it, it just worked so well and looked so good that I recommend it to everyone (BigLinux with KDE)