I settled upon Manjaro as a good blend of up-to-date and fast, yet usable by mere mortals. It’s Arch but for cowards, and trying it on a few older machines it’s been a painless experience.

Manjaro KDE is ideal for tech-savvy users who are new to Linux and searching for a professional distro. It is based on Arch Linux—a distro geared towards advanced Linux users—but Manjaro has ...