After distro-hopping for a while, I've finally settled on NixOS on ZFS root. The ability to boot into any previously working configuration if you manage to screw something up that doesn't work with your hardware or whatever (which is unfortunately still far more common on Linux than on Windows or macOS, if ever... and this feature is via GRUB and NixOS, this doesn't even touch ZFS snapshots which are yet another layer of security), as well as having all configuration be declarative (and storeable in, say, a github repo, and deterministically reproducible) is frankly "the only safe way to fly" in the Linux ecosystem IMHO.

The only trouble is, it's still definitely for power-user Linux folks. There is at least 1 fork trying to put a dent in this problem, though: https://snowflakeos.org/