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2 months ago (edited) Report 👍

The others below me have shared Mint, which I do agree is a very good starter distro. It comes with Cinnamon, which is a very good desktop environment if you are getting used to migrating from Windows.

Another one I will stand by is Debian, which is my current distribution of choice, with KDE Plasma as my desktop environment. Debian in my experiences has been very easy to get most programs set up on. It's the distro that Ubuntu is based off of. When you install Debian, you are able to choose which desktop environment you want, so if you like the look of say Cinnamon more then KDE, you can download Cinnamon for it. Linux Mint also offers a Debian edition that I also would recommend!

Linux Mint will have a more straightforward install process then Debian, and will be easier to learn, so definitely consider that as well. If you'd like, here is a link where you can test these distributions before you download them!

2 months ago (edited) Report 👍

For me Mint has been the easiest. Just keep in mind some programs won't work on Linux so compromises will need to be made. Most notably online games and professional applications. That being said, there's usually an alternative. 

You can always have Linux and Windows installed on the same machine, but I was switching to get rid of Windows so that wasn't an option for me 😅

2 months ago (edited) Report 👍

nice, just be ready to distrohop for the next year, minimum-

jokes aside, Mint is a quite easy to use (if you're coming from a windows background) and has good performance.

gaming however depends on what games specifically you want - although in my experience most things work just fine through Steam Proton or Wine, worst case, and it just keeps getting better as time passes :)