>>2201409Start by using OpenSUSE in a VM. Or any distro that seems interesting. But starting point should be some commonly used pre-packaged and pre-configured distribution such as OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mint, etc. so that you have access to community for help and tips, its distro specific documentation and other resources. Check IRC and Discord channels for these distros.
Do not install drivers for your hardware directly from manufacturer's website.
Use distro specific software/package manager to install things. There are GUIs for them but it often in my opinion tends to be easier to just use CLI versions of dnf, apt, pacman, portage, etc. instead of Gnome Software or alike.
Try different desktop environments such as KDE Plasma and Gnome to figure out what feels best for you. Main difference between Plasma and Gnome is the widget toolkit used to write programs for the desktop which determines its look and feel. KDE Plasma uses Qt and look and feels like MS-Windows.
Gnome is macOS-like but does many things in its own way. Gnome is usually the "default" desktop on Linux but it tends to split opinions. Its toolkit GTK+ and libraries are used to build most of the other desktop environments in Linux such as Mint's Cinnamon, or the famous XFCE which resemble MS-Windows more.
Use Linux at least one year on real hardware before attempting to move to any advanced distribution such as Gentoo, Arch, SourceMage, etc. However I wouldn't recommend it for most users. The main benefit of distribution such as Arch is usually marginally better performance, slightly newer software and ability to have the system configured just the way you want it to be in exchange for a lot of your time.
Maintaining advanced distributions also take a lot of time and knowledge. There are iterations such as Manjaro (based on Arch) which automate a lot of this and make it easier to use. So rather than moving to Arch directly it might make more sense to first move to Manjaro before jumping to Arch.
