midnight

I think you’re missing their point, they weren’t saying that Blender is cad, it’s just a good comparison, as a successful piece of software in the the same broad, general category (3D modeling)

We want what Blender is to mesh modeling, rendering, etc, but for parametric cad, manufacturing, etc. Basically Fusion 360 but open source, without any of Autodesk’s bs. Ideally it would even work together with Blender for rendering.

Yeah I would say you might as well just go with mint then. Debian based distros are popular for a reason.

EndeavourOS is really probably the best overall option though, as you have the best software availability, but if you’re not comfortable using the terminal, I might avoid it. (Although I will say that package management with yay is super easy, just yay [packagename] to search and install interactively. Also to update your system just alias yay -Syu to “update” if you have trouble remembering the right flags. I’d really recommend learning to use the terminal regardless of distro, though.)

ViMusic - ad free music streaming
TrackerControl - view and block app trackers
LibreTube - ad free youtube client
Termux - Terminal

There are also plenty of replacements for builtin apps like camera, gallery, maps, etc, although I personally haven’t made that jump yet as there are some missing quality of life features.