It’s my choice but Arch and its derivatives look like the trend like CachyOS which is #1 right now on visits on distrowatch. Also I’ve heard Google use Debian as gLinux and I feel many other giants also use it and sponsor it and I’m not comfortable choosing it as my distro. Can the sponsors togethwr with students or any other interested use it for their PCs, either coding or ordinary use? It strictly promotes free but worried about giants and sponsors.
Pretty much anything I do is Debian, ive said it quite a bit before so this may be a repeat of previous comments, but…
Its solid, stable, easy to deploy with incredible flexibility and just about everything out there supports it. I do have a few boxes with arch, and they are also just fine - I wouldn’t use it as a server, personally, but its perfectly good for a “very current” approach to desktops/laptops.