Best Distro
I've effectively gone that route of moving away from Arch to Debian and although it hasn't been without some minor inconveniences from not having the most up to date software, I've been really happy with the change. I try to avoid flatpaks and for the most part have been successful, with like 2 or 3 exceptions so even if you're not much of a fan, I'd wager you'd be fine for the most part without them.
