To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time. I’ve used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I’d say it’s essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Same. I gave up on Bazzite (for the time being) the second time it just stopped updating. The first time, I had to rebase it entirely to get it to work for a while again. I wouldn’t want to put a new person through that. I’m not sure why everyone has a hard-on for immutable distros “for beginners” suddenly.