"For this reason, I’m planning to install Debian instead on the new laptop I’ve ordered"

Maybe have a look at manjaro, it is based on arch, but comes prepackaged, so you can just boot up the luve image and install, if everything works.

I’ve heard of Manjaro, but on the occasions when I’ve brought it up in conversation, people have almost unanimously warned me off from it in fairly strong terms… not entirely sure why, but that alone makes me reluctant to use it.

They had multiple issues with opsec in the past. Something that when repeats, makes people skittish. Fool me once and al..

I am not aware of critical issues, but there was indeed a time of confusion, when the dev leadership changed. So sources please for current flaws?

Big ones are: shadiness with funding, letting their SSL certs expire 4 times, and the fact that their idea of stable isn't additional testing, but just letting the packages sit for a week.

There was also a recent kerfluffle not covered there where they shipped a broken kernel to Apple Sillicon users without contacting the Asahi devs: https://twitter.com/AsahiLinux/status/1576356115746459648