Well, no, neither approach is better than the other, it’s apples and oranges.
There will always be a place for installing native applications. In the least analysis, the container itself should probably have some dependencies packaged for the target program.
The benefits of containerisation are obvious, but it’s been a lot of work and there are still edge cases to iron out.
FreeBSD has had jails since 2000. Linux, however, only got namespaces in 2008 and the first bubblewrap release on GitHub was 2016.
I’ve been using chroots and containers for development for about 2 years now and it’s been fantastic, however, I’m still grateful I don’t have to jump inside one every time I need to write a python script.
My framework has been great, I’ve had no issues with it and I’m quite happy. Make sure to go with the matte screen though.
In saying that, I think I was happier with my thinkpad, but I have no good scientific reason for that, I suspect the nipple and keyboard are a big part of it.
Go with EndeavourOS. It won’t “just work”, but it will be the best compromise between confusing abstraction and low level frustrations.
Fedora is good but it abstracts a little too much away, this is great when you understand how software works, but it’s very confusing when you’re new to Linux and programming.
Arch is good, but you won’t be able to hid the ground running, you’d have to sacrifice a weekend to learn.
Go:
[Optional] Fedora
Endeavour
Arch
Learning
Ghost BSD
Void
Gentoo
Tinkering with those in that order, after about 6 months, you’ll start to feel at home.