For me Fedora Workstation is the best: very stable, very up-to-date packages, a lot of available packages. System tweaking is minimal and is done once after installation: enable RPMFusion, add 3 Gnome extensions and Tweaks, use Nemo and mpv as default apps instead of Gnome ones. I like to have the freshest stuff, so I update Fedora daily, it is all automatic and usually takes a few minutes. Everything works and works reliably. After major releases I wait a few weeks for dust to settle and then upgrade. Usually it goes without any problems. I’ve been using Fedora for the last few years and no other distro I tried comes even close to stability, latest packages and functionality. There is a reason why even Linus (creator of Linux) prefers Fedora.
What follows are my criteria for a practical desktop user, who treats the computer like a tool. It is fine to have other preferences, I understand that people enjoy experimenting, but what I write below is not for them. My idea of a perfect OS setup is that
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I only have to reinstall when I change disks,
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Even then, I can migrate my setup with a minimum a mount of work.
With that in mind:
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The release policy fits your requirements. Eg Arch is a rolling release, Ubuntu/Fedora every 6 months, Debian every years or so. This is a trade-off between having new stuff vs stability. On a desktop, I would aim for one of the 6-month release cycle distros, but it is a personal choice.
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The packaging policy fits your requirements. Eg Debian/Ubuntu does not package everything, but what is packaged gets some level of support, issues are addressed eventually, etc. Arch has a much lower barrier to packaging, but a lot of the stuff is as-is. You can always fill in the gaps with PPAs, Flatpak, or compiling from source, the idea is that you only do this for a few programs, so that you reduce your maintenance burden. Eg I compile Darktable from source, it is trivial and infrequent.
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The installer supports what you want. Installers are simple, the idea is to set up the partitions, and bootstrap the system, you take it from there with the package manager. But not every installer supports each combination, eg ZFS/BTFS etc. Other than this, it is not the job of the installer to set up your desktop. It may do, as a kind of extra, but unless the distro supports this after the fact, what are you going to do when things change, reinstall? That’s a waste of time. (NB: Arch has installer scripts. There is no point in typing in stuff from setup guides.)
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Extras you need, like declarative reproducibility (NixOS), immutability (atomic whatever). These will severely restrict your choices and involve some inconvenience, so at the moment, only insist on them if you are really sure you need it, not because they sound nice.
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Corollary: avoid niche distros unless you are really sure you need them. Eg Ubuntu has a gazillion “derivatives” because someone liked to have a different default window manager. Probably you can just convert to an Ubuntu installation if they don’t work out with about 5 minutes of work, but why bother with them in the first place?
Bottom line: I would go with a 6 month release, plain vanilla mainstream Linux distro (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc), unless you have more specific requirements.