Ah so its the idiots still using non ublock

Because its the most useful.

Linux has their own forums and the other stuff is either moderated poorly or pretty useless

You can definitely do that if you are not explicitly required to use MS office. I had the problem some years ago… Used a vim with win 7 until it broke, then i forced them to lift the rule by GDPR

Mint cinnamon (Victoria 21.2)

Very beginner friendly and has a big community, most stuff works out of the box, steam is recommended heavily as it has a build in compatibility layer (Proton) if you want to check your favorite games check out at https://protondb.com/

Only notable thing is that MS office isn’t working on Linux unless the web app is used (wich isn’t a problem unless you are required by work/school to use it)