Arch Linux

Nothing is enabled after installation. While it can be a daunting task to manually hook up your PC to the wifi manually, this philosophy lets you hand-pick the services which you actually want to run, catering for a very personalised and clearly defined system.

I always say I started using arch for the "nerd cred" and stuck with it because of the package manager.

My main reasons for me to use arch are:

1. I can configure my system as I want it and if something breaks later I know how things fit together so I can fix them. Arch taught me a lot about Linux in general
2. The rolling release getting you new packages quite fast and not requiring you to do one big possibly breaking update once every year/two years (Ubuntu updates used to break for me a lot, I know that's much better now)
3. The package manager makes sense to me in so many ways. Especially compared with the apt-get, apt-cache, apt-key ... stuff you used to need. These days just using "apt" makes stuff much easier on Ubuntu as well.

If your new is still recommend Ubuntu as a starting point since installation is quite hassle free and most "Linux" tutorials online are geared toward Ubuntu. And then once you learned some Linux and you know what annoys you in ubuntu you can still switch "fixing" those things in your arch install. If you do go with arch were sure all happy to help.

Like has been said already, it depends where your priorities lie with your operations system.

• Do you want something super stable that basically just runs without issues? Go with something like Debian. Downside is that you will have to wait for the new stuff, since priority is stability.
• Do you want bleeding edge stuff? Go with Arch. However, be ready to spend your weekends fixing your OS because something broke.
• Do you kinda want something in between? Go with something like Fedora or openSuse Tumbleweed. Relatively stable yet pretty fast to update.