Please try linux mint, it truly is an exellent and nearly bullet proof OS. Pretty much the most popular distro so theres a good chance if you ever do run into an issue or want to know something its not hard to find the info you need with a simple query. No driver jankiness or hardware support issues ive ever experienced either.
True but I would go with Mate, Budgie or XFCE because I'm an old fashioned guy :) The new (now it's old I guess) gnome philosophy hasn't made a lot of sense to me on a non-touch device.