Weeellllll, I just went through the same exercise. I bought a used Dell 7490 and ditched windows 11 looking for a distro to live with. I've been a linux user since around 1998 or so, using Ubuntu first, and then almost every distro you can mention.
I installed UC on my machine and it is beautiful, but sketchy indeed. The tools are kind of disjointed and stability on my laptop was similar to what was mentioned above. Lots of error messages, crashes and loopy behavior like bluetooth dropping my mouse now and then. After trying Fedora 39 Cinnamon (beautiful and very good), LM 21.2 also great, Elementary, Evdeavor, Manjaro, Solus, MX, POP, and a few others I can't remember, I tried LMDE 6, and stopped there. I had one issue, that I had one issue, which I also had on several of the other distros. Libre Office tool bar not shoing up correctly, which only requires a uninstall and reinstall, that's it. It is fast, solid so far and very good looking.
I quit using Ubuntu when they went Unity and never went back except to try out a distro. They just don't seem to be interested in regaining their former "top distro" status. The are ok looking for the most part, but nothing special and I've had major issues with most of the versions I've tried in the interim. I'm not a fan of Snaps, but that wouldn't keep me from using Ubuntu if it would work like intended. I must admit, full disclosure, I'm a long time user of LM Cinnamon for many versions, and it has been the only day to day distros I could live with. Now, LMDE is my go to, as long as it stays as it is now.