Debian with KDE desktop. I prefer lighter DEs or WMs, but Debian is soooo stable and KDE looks so professional and makes it extremely easy to download packages - much easier than, say, Debian with XFCE which is what I use. When I set up linux on 2 old unused PCs for 2 coworkers after their computers died, I installed Debian with KDE and boss and coworkers were happy. Debian is the base of most distros, so sticking with Debian means more packages available usually and better tutorials and more stability. Even some foreign governments now use Debian as a base for their custom distros - China, too. I never had trouble getting Debian installed or running.

Debian or Linux Mint, if you want a no-nonsense, just works kind of experience.

Fedora is a good bet, it’s really up to date and should simultaneously be stable.

I use endeavouros (Arch) gnome variant because I need a working distribution in Mainland China with an additional emulated deepin application or two (I hate tinkering with wine or bottles). But otherwise I’d be using Fedora.

I like gnome. I’d say KDE second. Fedora workstation does gnome and there’s the kde variant of course.

I just went through this. LMDE: Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s Mint without Ubuntu and it’s pretty great.

There’s no big difference between ubuntu, mint or debian. I am not sure why people try to sell it to you.

Look up if fedora silverblue supports your stylus. Create a live image and test it. If it works, install it. If not fedora, then opensuse aeon.

I had to get away from Ubuntu because of the recent performance issues and the requirement to have an account to get updates faster. I have used CENTOS and more recently Rocky Linux on all my servers for over a decade, so Fedora was the obvious choice for me. I had problems with desktop applications being missing from rpm repos in the past, but that has greatly reduced improved and flatpack has helped with some stragglers. But I’m still not a fan of RedHat, but Fedora is a little more separate from them than Ubuntu is from Canonical.

I tried Debian, but it’s not easy to get up and running on a more modern laptop or desktop without a lot of tweaking and kernel mods. It’s a good base OS but not good out of the box desktop OS. Same issue with Arch based distros.

Whatever you choose you should enable zram! It’s a Linux kernel module so available on all distros. It makes a compressed partition on the ram.

I’ve had a ThinkPad with 8 GB of ram and it was night and day with zram enabled. Just used the defaults, no more stutter or hanging for minutes. I used Tumbleweed.

Fedora Atomic, GNOME or KDE will give you a system where you set it up and forget it.

I still like Ubuntu, as long as everything works, I recommend getting the LTS release.

Slackware!

I went from Ubuntu to MX Linux maybe 6 years ago, it is a fantastic distro, systemd optional, no flatpak/snap, xfce, simple, fast, always up to date for apps (.deb) and kernel.

Zorin maybe, idk

It sounds like anything with KDE Plasma will make you happy. If the underlying OS has been fine with you, then try Kubuntu. If you want a non-Ubuntu system, try openSuse or Fedora.

If you’re seeking something simple to use where you may never need to open the terminal, I’d say ZorinOS(Lite).

You can also test out Debian if you don’t mind a bit of tinkering on the terminal. You’ll have to add yourself as a user to the sudoers list first thing but there are plenty of 2-second video tutorials on how.

For both distros, if you are searching for support, you’d search “on Ubuntu” and basically the same would apply.

Recently install Fedora 42 KDE on one of those weird laptops with a pen - everything just works, no tinkering.
Looking at your specs - I have almost the same config, except in place of SATA SSD I installed a NVMe SSD, if course the laptop needs to support that. KDE Plasma is superior in the touch support, although the screen keyboard is a little buggy at times. But the situation in the GNOME ecosystem is a bit worse for touch/pen devices. Good luck