Funny that you mentioned these distro but I've never installed them, perhaps installed Slackware once, more than 20 years ago then just used Red Hat 7 (the original 7 not the later 7 version). After that Ubuntu and its derivatives.
What people don't realized that most of the Windows and MacOS users never installed their desktop OS, it come pre-installed. The main problem with these "works out the box" distro, there's no "box" to start with. Tried to installed Gentoo when it's initially released but it's a death by thousand cuts if you know what I meant, conflict after conflict resolution, and painfully slow installation process due to it's a source based distro.
If Aeon can work as promised, I think it will be a huge success provided that they solve the installation nightmare of many Linux OS and install seamlessly on mainstream laptop hardware.