Looking for some suggestions, preferably with existing tested compatibility with the Framework laptop hardware so I can do more well rounded research. I’m the most familiar with Ubuntu and CentOS. Picked Ubuntu initially for mid 2000s nostalgia purposes but it’s time to move on.
EDIT: As some people have pointed out, “more privacy oriented” was probably not the best phrase to use here. I am looking to move off of a Linux OS with corporate sponsorship and also looking forward to exploring Linux OSes that are privacy focused.
Two things:
Arch is very DIY and has very few defaults setup for the user - you’re essentially building the OS to be exactly how you like it, as opposed to other distros where it’s functional right away and you customize on top of that. I.e. when you boot off of an ISO for Arch you just get a terminal and have to install from there, choosing basically every package you’re going to want from fonts, desktop environments, login screens, etc. I like it quite a bit because it really forced me to learn how my system works and to fix issues myself. To get a feel for what I’m talking about take a look at the Installation Guide.
The second thing about Arch is that they try to update packages ASAP from upstream; this is in contrast to other distros that might keep a certain version older for ‘stability’ reasons. IMHO I find other distros frustrating when I encounter a bug that I discover was already fixed a year ago upstream and won’t be available in the distro until the next release - I think that does more to harm the user than keeping everything, including bugs, constant.
If you’re going to play with Arch I suggest you try it in a VM first and see if you can get it functional before you mess with your main system.