My kids only know Linux and have never seen Windows in their life before. They know their way around KDE just fine and get the stuff done they need. For gaming, it is steam with proton but mostly they game on consoles.

Mine, too

Decided to stick with pure Arch in the end.

I’ve used Gentoo in the past for 6 years on my desktop and was quite happy with it. I was pretty much in your boat, I knew my way around, could fix problems and knew where to ask for help. All fine and well until time became an issue.

I went with windows for a couple of years until I was fed up with it (again) and switched back to Linux. After some testing, I went with arch. It gives me the closest feeling to Gentoo, without the endlessly long compile times. It requires some learning of the ins and outs but once you’re settled, the experience is on par with Gentoo (at least for me).