The major tip I always give is: Linux is different from Windows, this means things are done differently and if you try to do things the windows way you’re going to have a bad time.
As for distro hoping forget about this, you’ll experience it but it shouldn’t start for a while, pick something you’re comfortable with (maybe the same you use on your server) and a DE that looks good to you (personally I like KDE Plasma, but this is a very personal choice, and I don’t even use KDE but I’m not going to recommend i3 for someone who’s just starting now). Distro hoping will start whenever you see something that picks your interest on a different distro, and you decide to give it a try, but that should only come into place after you’re comfortable with the one you’re using. But I always also recommend keeping /home in a different partition just so it’s easier to switch or reinstall the system if needed.