Debian with KDE desktop. I prefer lighter DEs or WMs, but Debian is soooo stable and KDE looks so professional and makes it extremely easy to download packages - much easier than, say, Debian with XFCE which is what I use. When I set up linux on 2 old unused PCs for 2 coworkers after their computers died, I installed Debian with KDE and boss and coworkers were happy. Debian is the base of most distros, so sticking with Debian means more packages available usually and better tutorials and more stability. Even some foreign governments now use Debian as a base for their custom distros - China, too. I never had trouble getting Debian installed or running.

I still like Ubuntu, as long as everything works, I recommend getting the LTS release.

Fedora is a good bet, it’s really up to date and should simultaneously be stable.

I use endeavouros (Arch) gnome variant because I need a working distribution in Mainland China with an additional emulated deepin application or two (I hate tinkering with wine or bottles). But otherwise I’d be using Fedora.

I like gnome. I’d say KDE second. Fedora workstation does gnome and there’s the kde variant of course.

+1 for stability in Debian. My main driver is usually LMDE.

I have a Lenovo Flex with Aurora, which is a version of Fedora Atomic with “batteries installed” (nonfree libraries included) and a KDE desktop.

If you prefer Gnome that version is Bluefin.

The advantage of an atomic/immutable distro is that it’s effectively impossible to break, but you can’t tinker with the internals like you would a regular distro. And that’s still with fresh packages hot from the oven about once a week.

I would go Debian for stability.

I like fedora since it updates a little more frequently than Debian, but it isn’t a full on rolling release. I used opensuse tumbleweed for a while and it broke on me several times.

I also used arch for a while, but I’m a dad to young children and I just don’t have the time to fuck around with my OS anymore. When I have time to work on my personal dev projects, I just want to drop into tmux, launch neovim and go. After some distro hopping I landed on Fedora with KDE for my desktop and gnome on my laptop. I also have an old netbook running antix with iceWM and an old thinkpad running fedora i3. The latter 2 machines are my hard focus machines.

Arch Linux!

Recently install Fedora 42 KDE on one of those weird laptops with a pen - everything just works, no tinkering.
Looking at your specs - I have almost the same config, except in place of SATA SSD I installed a NVMe SSD, if course the laptop needs to support that. KDE Plasma is superior in the touch support, although the screen keyboard is a little buggy at times. But the situation in the GNOME ecosystem is a bit worse for touch/pen devices. Good luck

If you want stability, you probably can’t beat Debian, and you should be fairly used to the backend by now. I suspect the stylus use is just going to be figuring out what package provided your current access to it.

Before you wipe the laptop, I would recommend finding a command to list all the installed packages, then at least you’ll have a reference to what was in place before. And if possible, maybe grab a backup of the /etc folder (or whatever might still be accessible) so you can reference the current configs on various packages to recreate whatever doesn’t work by default.

There are a number of lightweight desktops you can choose from. I personally like Mate, but maybe you can play around with others on the new system and purge the ones you don’t like. And while you’re swapping drives, check the memory slots, maybe you can drop another 8GB stick in there to give the whole system a boost.

Debian proper. You’ll have issues with any stylus on Linux. Not to say it won’t work but may need more effort to get working.

I have a 2-in-1 laptop that folds with a touchscreen and Debian has been good for me. Sometimes I have to toggle the auto-rotate on the screen on and off to get it to work again but I doubt that issue is Debian specific. I don’t know about a stylus but even if Debian doesn’t include drivers for it, installing proprietary drivers manually isn’t that bad.

My specs are worse than yours and it runs fine for productivity stuff. I use it for writing, spreadsheets, some web tools, and notes / references while running tabletop games.

There’s no big difference between ubuntu, mint or debian. I am not sure why people try to sell it to you.

Look up if fedora silverblue supports your stylus. Create a live image and test it. If it works, install it. If not fedora, then opensuse aeon.

Debian works fine. Post your model number.

Linux Mint?

I just went through this. LMDE: Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s Mint without Ubuntu and it’s pretty great.