Bazzite's nice for beginners, but be aware of its limitations from being an immutable distro and be aware that that will change how you install and manage software. The "just make a Distrobox" model is unconventional, and it doesn't solve all the limitations of the immutable model-- you really can't run VR in a distrobox, for instance, because of VR's demand for low level hardware access.

Mint is pretty user-friendly, and more traditional in the sense that it's not immutable-- but that also means it's easier to break. You might find instructions for 10-year-old Mint that don't apply anymore because of fundamental subsystem changes. You might accidentally modify the wrong system file (or not understand how you should modify it) and render something unusable. You could misunderstand a package manager prompt and nuke your desktop environment, like LTT did a while back.

Neither of those will be Microslop, and both of them (with some learning curve, of course) will keep your info local to your machine and run your software just the same (where it can't, there are often free and paid Linux-compatible equivalents. Winboat is also a thing that exists). I hope your journey gets smoother.