unfortunately, distro choice is NOT about what the distro looks & feels like during the first 30 minutes, and which applications it ships with.
those are both attributes that ALL (ok, not ubuntu, but almost all) gnu/linuxes are perfectly equipped to deal with through
a) themeing
b) software/driver installation

i always wonder: how long will it last?
my distro choice has lasted for almost 4 years now...

More things work when their being worked on.

The link I gave is to Debian's including the non-free firmware.

I was about to trply upon similar lines. Most "stable" distributions, in my experience, have older versions of software also which can make it trickier installing the latest versions of things. For example, I think Debian Stable's Firefox is now OK but in the past it's been out of date causing issues with extensions and missing features listed in articlkes about Firefox.

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You mean when what used to be fine is being worked on by stamping out regressions caused by "improvements"?

If you mean by stable 5 year LTS release that is 57 months old, sure; stables with lifetimes of 12-24 months not so much. "Latest" versions aren't necessarily better, especially with web browsers dumbing down and overhauling UIs and extension APIs at the same time their code is bloating. Latest version too often means new bugs to go with new features rather than bugs have been stomped out. Rolling can mean shorter or no public testing period prior to being deemed release-ready. Newbies ought to be steered toward stables unless they have a known need for previously absent hardware support or something particularly important otherwise unavailable. While learning on stable ropes they can gather whether rolling might be better suited to their futures.

Thanks for your suggestion!

You are welcome! My suggestion for you on your search is to try as many as you care to try, but try not to pick 10 different ones built off the same distribution. DistroWatch is a good website to use to get an idea of what each one provides by default.

With cutting-edge you can't really speak from experience unless running it, now‽ I use a stable browser as it works for HULU &c and a "unstable" one for day to day, it all just woks!

Two slightly tongue in cheek replies to that.

A well known saying amongst software developers is .
If it is working change it until it stops.
If it is stable, it is well out of date, and the company is going bust.

Don't confuse unstable for unstable...

Or old for working.

Latest may not be better but latest is often expected. Features that people have come to expect from Windows or because they're mentioned on tech websites can often be missing from "stable" versions. And things like kernel versions and drivers in more stable distributions are sometimes lacking support for newer (and I don't mean the newest) hardware.

You mean me, who on one system keeps 5 different browers open 24/7, plus others as circumstances dictate, plus multples also on as many as 6 other multiboot PCs at once?

I think my quest may have ended ... suggestions for bodhi led to solus os, which is beautiful and only weighs in at 4.5 gb with libre office installed, soft i dont need removed and stuff i need installed. everything from stick to install to using just seems to work right out of the box.

Thanks for all the constructive suggestions!

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Stability matters, but that was not what the OP asked.
Many of these minimal distributions are more locked down and stable than the parent distributions, in part BECAUSE they have fewer parts to break and fewer packages installed by default.
I cannot recall the last time anyone broke Puppy or TinyCore (or DSL=Damn Small Linux for that matter).
Elementary OS, Lubuntu, and Mint are based mostly on Ubuntu, and I have heard fewer stability concerns expressed about them than about Ubuntu. MintDE, Q4OS, and Sparky Linux are very strongly based on Debian yet are even more stable. (Though Sparky is a bit higher risk than the other two, as it is more cutting edge.)
I can think of some distributions that DO have stability issues from time to time, but no one here has recommended any of those. An nice indicator concerning the quality of this community, I believe.

The factor here is "simple" is more likely to apply to a smaller spin-off of a larger distribution. That rather makes the suggestions more inevitable than problematic.