Artix Linux is a minimal Linux distro without systemd based on Arch Linux. systemd is a suite of software that helps manages your system, with the main utility being an init system, but it doesn't follow the Unix philosphy making it a bloated and complicated mess. You can choose the init system you want on Artix, with my choice being runit, due to it being used on Void Linux. With it being derived from Arch Linux, you have access to the Arch User Repository (AUR) making it really easy to install software not supported in the official repository. You also have to manually install the system, which makes the system tailored to you but it takes a lot of time.

This distribution is based off Ubuntu, which itself is based off Debian and it is tailored towards beginners. It is the most easiest to install and use as it comes preinstalled with a desktop environment and useful software like the software manager and driver manager. The desktop environment is Cinnamon, which is familiar to the Windows 7 desktop and it's very customizable, allowing you to select different themes, mouse cursors and window borders. The software manager allows you to install software from the repositories or from flathub, with its containerized flatpaks.

river is a simple wayland compositor that follows the Unix philosophy. It resembles dwm in its minimalism and default keybindings. The configuration is simple and doesn't require much tweaking. Unlike dwm, many features are included like gaps or window transparency.

dwm is a minimal window manager for X that follows the suckless philosophy. It is extremely customizable as the only configuration is through source code, which doesn't sound as bad as it does. You edit config.h to change the configuration. Since it is very flexible due to following the suckless philosophy, you can apply patches and extend the functionality of dwm. However, you will need to install extra software like dmenu.

KDE Plasma is an easy to use desktop environment with a lot of customizability. It looks pretty by default and looks even more pleasing when applying custom themes. It's very easy to use and easy to configure through the System Settings application.

XFCE is a lightwieght desktop environment that is familiar to older desktops, like Windows 95. In fact, it can be customized to look exactly like it with the Chicago95 project. It's very customizable, allowing you to stick with the traditional computing experience or to create a more modern feel to the user interface.

imv is a minimal image viewer for X and Wayland with default keybindings that make sense (unlike feh).

mpv is a customizable and lightweight video player without a complicated GUI. You can install scripts to extend the functionality, like mpvacious, which makes Anki cards semi-automatically through mpv.

ncmpcpp is a minimal terminal music player, that uses mpd as the backend to play music. It does take some time to configure both mpd and ncmpcpp but it creates a nice and simple way to listen to your music.

qBittorrent is a torrent client, with i2p support, that has a nice Qt user interface making it easy to use and has good download and upload speeds, compared to other i2p-only torrent clients.