First off, welcome to the club! You’ve taken your first step into a larger world :) I was a Windows user most of my life. Switched 100% about 4 years ago and I’ve never looked back.
Lots of good advice here, make sure Timeshift is set up. It can save you from accidentally borking your system lol.
As for Distros, my favorites for new users are Linux Mint, Fedora, and Pop_OS. I currently use Linux Mint with their Cinnamon desktop on my laptop and it works great. Cinnamon is similar to a cross between Windows XP and Windows 7 and feels very familiar to navigate for a long time Windows user.
My favorite desktop environment is KDE Plasma, because you can customize it like crazy.
Use the live image editions to test on USB like other people suggested, it will save you lots of time deciding which distro and desktop environment to choose.