Free and open-source.
Receives regular software and kernel updates.
Avoids X11.
The notable exception is Qubes, but the isolation issues which X11 typically has are avoided by virtualization. This isolation only applies to apps running in different qubes (virtual machines), apps running in the same qube are not protected from each other.
Supports full-disk encryption during installation.
Doesn’t freeze regular releases for more than 1 year.
We recommend against “Long Term Support” or “stable” distro releases for desktop usage.
Supports a wide variety of hardware.
Preference towards larger projects.
Edit: I’m new to linux
Notably openSUSE Tumbleweed is a distro that satisfies all requirements while not being named yet by others. Apart from it, only Arch and Fedora are worth mentioning as distros that also satisfy all requirements (as some others have already noted).
Those three crystallize more and more to be my favorite distros
(Have to try arch and Fedora yet, but what my friends have looks very good)
I’m of the opinion that systems and packages should be current and I find little to no merit in using a derived distro for myself. For this, the aforementioned three distros and NixOS are just plain superior over all the others IMO. NixOS was absent from my original comment due to how radically different it is compared to any other distro. But it’s definitely worth checking out if one is not scared of learning a thing or two.
😁i guess I’ll try nixOS on my current empty partition of my old iMac and see if the drivers work as well as they do with openSuse tumbleweed (they did very bad with manjaro and it killed itself twice in succession, lol)