MX Linux which is number 1 on Distrowatch for a reason. Much easier than installing Debian itself which needs some tweaking, and really just Debian with some extra tools, latest Firefox… The Debian 12 based version is ready and I don’t have any issues. I also run Debian set to Trixie/Sid, which is fun if you want Debian to be like a rolling release distro, but you need to enable some bug reports and know how to manage updates to not have things break on you.

Syncthing. I rotate different Linux operating systems daily, but all my data is synced with Syncthing between all my machines, smartphone and a server. Kind of like Chrome OS in that I can wipe or reinstall the OS and be instantly back up and running, or even install a new version of Linux to try out.

Depends on your use case, but there is Tails OS if you’re a whistleblower or reporter and afraid of state actors, and Parrot Security OS has a lot of security, privacy features as well being a pentest distro. I ran Parrot OS for a while and it was pretty good. Good things for privacy, use a VPN to mask your IP as well as using privacy proxy search engines. I tend to not trust many of the VPN companies that were being gobbled up with one linked to Israeli intelligence, so I run my own Wireguard server, Pi-Hole/Unbound DNS servers on everything with lots of block lists, and my own Searxng and Whoogle search proxies. And some things I do behind Tor. A state actor can pin me down with my own VPN server which lacks a lot of users, but that’s not my worry and I use it to just mask my home IP and protect me from ISP snooping for normal internet use.

I seem to remember rust support was for writing drivers. Rust is the new language to get rid of buffer overflows and memory issues the programmer in C had to manage manually, so much more secure. And Linus just manages the kernel and doesn’t contribute code, so it should continue just fine without him. And it’s open source, so it can be forked if people don’t like its direction at any time. And there are alternative kernels you can install now that have real time functionality, better timing… if you have a need.

The Rust for Linux project was announced in 2020 in the Linux kernel mailing list with goals of leveraging Rust’s memory safety to reduce bugs when writing kernel drivers.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_for_Linux

Linus has a great mind for creating and managing a Linux kernel, but like actors and others he has no qualifications for his other opinions that nobody asked for. And instead of making a lucid argument, he name calls and is rude and actually makes a fool of himself. And guns are just a tool that any law abiding citizen should be able to purchase, and I’ve used one to defend myself when my front door was kicked in at 4:30am. With our wicked drug addicted society becoming more and more lawless, the need for personal firearms has never been greater. And we already have a ton of gun regulations, background checks…

I’d recommend MX Linux, which is a Debian based distribution that has dominated distrowatch.com for a long time for good reason. They have a bunch of management tools, newest Firefox… You might try just using it in VMWare Player (free) virtualization first, which has better 3D support than Virtualbox. I’m currently using MX Linux KDE Beta and it’s solid as they’re only tweaking some of their tools after the latest Debian release. And they have a good forum community for help. And Debian is the base from which Ubuntu and other distributions are built, and kind of the foundational Linux version which makes it a good place to learn Linux.