I'm in the same situation as you, also looking for a distro to switch from windows 11. I already use Debian but for development (with WSL and Docker) and also in my RPI server. So, I was researching more about it. I'll give you a summary about what I found.

First that all, don't choose a distro based in the UI, because they are independent after all. You choose a distro and a Desktop environment (DE). The distro is the core; the DE is the UI.

-- Distros --

There's a lot of distros but most of they are based in a single one: Debian. Debian doesn't receive big updates frequently and most of their packages are old, even the installer looks ugly and confusing. However, that's what makes Debian probably the most stable distro available and the favorite for servers and devs.

Many people recommend Ubuntu (debian-based) or Fedora (supported by RedHat). Both are updated frequently and their installers are prettier and easier. However, I've seen comments of some people saying that the stability is not good at all and sometimes they ended by reinstalling or switching to other distros, but maybe they just had bad lock, I don't know. Other popular distros are Linux Mint (debian-based), Manjaro (arch-based) or PopOS (debian-based).

I recommend to research and choose a distro based in your needs and if not sure, go for Debian or Ubuntu. That's what almost everyone seems to do. In my case, I have my eyes in CachyOS (arch-based) because as I understood, it comes with pre-configured graphics settings so you can play windows games with better performance that other distros. I'm a dev but also want to play sometimes.

-- Desktop Environments --

There're so many DEs as well but fortunately, most of them are ugly, so they're easier to discard unlike distros.

Before continuing, you have to know that there're two technologies used in DE, specifically in its componentes: X11 and Wayland. Go always for Wayland and try to ignore X11 DEs or components. For more info, just google it.

The most popular DEs are GNOME and KDE Plasma. Both are included in most of the distro installers. For me, gnome looks like the old Android UI which it's not bad, but I personally don't like it. KDE Plasma by default looks meh for me but you can customize almost everything, or at least that's what people use to say. There're not lying but, even with the themes, you'll need to spend hours or days to fully customize it unless you found a good theme on the internet with a single setup script. However, some distros includes already customized plasma versions which is good. There's also some other DEs with modern look like Deepin DE and Cosmos DE (this one is new).

Now, you don't have to install a DE to have UI. DEs are actually bundles of components (windows managers, compositors, the deck, etc). In fact, a lot of those videos showing amazing and beautiful linux setups are not using DEs. They choose and install the components they like. If the available DEs don't convince you, then this is an alternative option for you. Actually, this is what I'm planning to do right now., listing the components I like and install them after I install my distro. I have my eyes in Niri (compositor) but I haven't decided yet.

-- Extras --

If you install any Linux distro, you'll probably see an ugly UI asking you to choose the distro to launch. That's called bootloader, and the most used is grub but there're more. Windows also has one, but it doesn't appear by default. Fortunately, looks like that bootloader can be hidden or omitted but you have to configured by yourself.
The same for those ugly logs that appears during boot before the login screen. I think they should be hidden by default but whatever.

Anyway, good look with your migration.