I grew tired of shitty “Top 10 Linux distros in ${CURRENT_YEAR}” articles so I wrote a blogpost, that I would personally consider helpful when I was starting out, so I can simply link it to people when they ask my opinion on a beginner distro.
Objective criticism is welcome and encouraged.
I specifically mentioned Manjaro as not recommended because of all the silly stuff they did. It will most probably not break on you, but forgetting to renew your SSL certificate like 4 times in a row does not really instill confidence.