The only thing I’d hesitate on is the integrated graphics. Tbh I have no idea how that will behave. Aurora’s system requirements lead me to conclude that if your laptop is later than ~2014, you should be okay.

My Aurora desktop starts using ~2GB memory at boot, so your 16 should be fine.

Before I forget, their GNOME workstation distro: https://projectbluefin.io/ if you’re into that.

I recommend Aurora because I already use it, and think it’s cool. I’ve only ever used it on one machine, so if you go that route, I hope your experience is good, too. I like KDE, and Aurora is immutable so it’s harder to mess up critical components. Works for me.

I use Aurora, done by the same guys who make Bazzite (de facto PC gaming distro) Aurora is immutable, a flavor of Fedora, meant as a general purpose workstation. It comes with KDE, but UniversalBlue has some distros with other DE’s built in, as your post suggests you don’t like KDE

I had tried Manjaro before that, but I kept messing up the network drivers somehow. Thus, I looked for immutable distros that are harder for me to break. If you’re not as reckless as me, Manjaro might do you good?