I have Fedora on my work laptop and vanilla Arch on my tinkering laptop.
I think instead of thinking about “set it and forget it”, you might want to think about “if shit happens, how fast can I fix it?”. That is because stuff break or there are bugs . If you use a very old and LTS distro, you might be comfortable but there might be bugs that do not get fixed until much later. Eg: Debian’s kernel used to be able to suspend-then-hibernate, then they jump to one that cannot. So if you want that feature back, you need to wait… until Debian catches up with mainline’s fixes.
So if you only use your computer for web, email, movie. Then any distro will work.
Now, imo there are 2 types of problems in Linux:
Boot/GRUB/partition problems: this can happen if you’re dual boot, or a config goes wrong. To fix, usually you need to boot a live cd.
Pop OS would be #1 choice just because it has a “Recovery Partition” with live environment. You can reinstall the entire OS while you’re on the plane, without wifi or any USB.
Arch would be #2 here, just because the arch iso is so good. It is minimal and has all the tools you need to fix stuff: partitions, wifi…etc. Plus, it boots in tty so it is faster for fixing.
Problems with library mismatch: for this you want one with good snapshots built in. So OpenSUSE or if you know how to configure btrfs, maybe Fedora. I would still go Pop OS here, so you can configure btrfs AND get the recovery from point 1) above. Linux Mint would be #2 choice because they have timeshift built in.
So the TLDR for you is: pick Pop OS for the recovery partition. Also, use btrfs. Lastly, configure your disk nicely, i.e. dont do any crazy LVM encryption, just use standard layout so when comes the time to fix, it is easier.
I have Fedora on my work laptop and vanilla Arch on my tinkering laptop.
I think instead of thinking about “set it and forget it”, you might want to think about “if shit happens, how fast can I fix it?”. That is because stuff break or there are bugs . If you use a very old and LTS distro, you might be comfortable but there might be bugs that do not get fixed until much later. Eg: Debian’s kernel used to be able to suspend-then-hibernate, then they jump to one that cannot. So if you want that feature back, you need to wait… until Debian catches up with mainline’s fixes.
So if you only use your computer for web, email, movie. Then any distro will work.
Now, imo there are 2 types of problems in Linux:
Pop OS would be #1 choice just because it has a “Recovery Partition” with live environment. You can reinstall the entire OS while you’re on the plane, without wifi or any USB.
Arch would be #2 here, just because the arch iso is so good. It is minimal and has all the tools you need to fix stuff: partitions, wifi…etc. Plus, it boots in tty so it is faster for fixing.
So the TLDR for you is: pick Pop OS for the recovery partition. Also, use btrfs. Lastly, configure your disk nicely, i.e. dont do any crazy LVM encryption, just use standard layout so when comes the time to fix, it is easier.