Linux

Linux Mint is perfect! Avoid Ubuntu, which has a very shady history... Despite Mint being based on Ubuntu/Debian, it doesn't have any spying software. Like Ubuntu used to send all the search queries to Ubuntu when you were searching locally on your system for a file or an image.

One I haven't seen here is Arco Linux. It's designed as a kind of learning path from getting to know basic Linux concepts to being able to install Arch on your own, so I think it's a pretty good early choice, tho probably not that good for the first choice.

General recommendation is that you choose something with good community support or at least good documentation. You might also not want a rolling release, because they tend to be more on the unstable side.

I was in a similar situation; I was a windows power user and I jumped straight into nixos. I do not recommend it for someone completely new to linux.

Having to deal with new concepts and confusing terminology like window/display/login managers, a new file system, bash, desktop environments, etc., and then having to learn nix (my first dive into a functional language), nixpkgs, NixOS, AND all the noise surrounding flakes was incredibly frustrating. After a week I gave up and jumped ship.

I played around with void linux for a bit (followed jake@linux's playlist on YT, it's a fantastic guide), had a blast ricing my desktop, got comfortable running without a desktop environment, then went back to nix a month later. By that point I was familiar enough with linux and just had to learn the nix ecosystem (still difficult, but bearable).

Things started to click, especially once I had read the nix pills in its entirety. Now with my entire system configured with flakes I just can't see myself ever going back :>

I never tried the beginner friendly distros like mint or ubuntu so I can't comment on them, but I was really happy with void. Yes it's doesn't hold your hand, but it very quickly taught me a lot about how everything fits together. I'm sure arch provides a similar experience.