Personally prefer :xprobably because it’s a little more ergonomic, as Z is all the way in the corner (QWERTY), and is the same key twice, while : and x are in two different spots, and can therefore be hit faster.
I know, it’s like millisecond differences, but, hey, I’m a vim user.
I don’t tend to recommend Ubuntu anymore: mainly because of snaps.
I had a weird start with Linux, using it on my Pi and then eventually just installing NixOS as my first distro. A weird first choice, but honestly it makes even advanced tasks trivial(I can switch my WM/DE in one line!)
Second this. System76 themselves sell multiple machines with Nvidia cards, so they have at least some incentive to make it work.
I see Fedora recommended quite a bit, but setting it up on my younger family member’s laptop was bot exactly simple, and setting up his game library proved near impossible.
PopOS just worked. I try not to be too pushy about Linux, but as someone who was pushed into (and now loves) using Linux, I’d suggest giving it one more shot. (I still dual-boot: keep a small Windows partition for the occasional need).