People! Thanks so much for the super useful advice! I'll take it all in.

The last time I tried Linux as a desktop OS was in 2001. It wasn't fun. Clearly stuff, and apparently even Gimp, got better.

And to be clear: am truly not ignorant but when it comes to the OS of my computer I just don't want to make that itself a hobby.
Until recently clean installs of Windows, despite its flaws, have just worked fine for me as the tool they are. For my use it's only with win11 that this changed.