Linux

mint is probably where you want to be. if you have performance issues with mint, consider MX Linux, AntiX, and EndeavourOS, in that order.

Don't get mint if you'll get a remotely capable laptop or plan to game on it. Its so called 'modern' desktop environment (wich still defaults to the old X window system) feels awful to use imo and while the 'retro' ones are better there's no point in using them on a new laptop. Choose a distro that ships with KDE, GNOME, or a wlroots based desktop environment.

I've also had driver issues with it that didn't happen with Ubuntu or arch.

Pretty much every distro has a caveman compatible installer.

Absolutely Debian stable, the first thing i wanted in Linux was stability, coming from windows you want something that "just works" and I think Debian stable + Gnome is the perfect choice for this!

I can’t disagree with mint being a good distribution, because it is.

I personally think for someone just starting out in Linux that an immutable distribution like fedora silverblue (gnome) or kinoite (kde) is the safest route to take. They’re difficult to break. I personally use bazzite on my framework laptop and it’s basically hassle free. Not for everyone, but they work well.

Any Debian/Ubuntu or fedora based distro will do you fine. I personally ran PopOS when I built my computer earlier this year and didn't have any issues with it

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or one of the offshoots like Mint or Pop.

As long as you don't go too far into the weeds with Arch, Silverblue or NixOS, You're probably going to have a pretty decent experience, as long as you don't dig too far under the hood too early most things that you're going to want to try are just going to work out of the gate.

to those suggesting mint, any particular reasons to choose between Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce versions?

I usually recommend Zorin OS to noobs, but personally I prefer arch based

I've never noticed any hate for Mint, it seems to be a pretty good option. It'll easily run on anything that was able to run Windows 10 (probably 8 too) and the default desktop environment Cinnamon is easy to navigate if you're coming from Windows. Even if you have some obscure piece of hardware with Mint being based on Ubuntu there's probably a tutorial you can follow to get it working.

Install a few and see which one you like the most. You can install several distros at the same time and they'll all appear in the boot menu. When I was deciding which distro to use on my laptop, I was dual booting Debian and Fedora, with one /home partition shared between both of them.

Mint and Fedora are good choices IMO. Everyone is different though :)

Debian all day...

All these shiny new distros promising to make things easier and better... But nothing is easier and better than 30 years of rock solid stability and support.

Depending on how new the laptop is, it might not work on debian stable. Check your compatibility

From personal experience with a new laptop, the intel meteor lake platform didnt work well with debian stable

Mint was my beginner distro and is what I recommend. In my experience I was able to find a solution for most of my beginner problems by searching for a solution for mint.

linux from scratch /s

Linux Mint is good, Pop_OS! is good, Fedora is good.

The first time in installed mint I ruined the partitions on my laptop. But that was on me.

Look at screenshots of default interfaces and pick your fave bug distro. Can't go wrong with fedora, Ubuntu, mint, pop_os etc. mint would be good since you have a friend who uses it. When you want to know how to do something you can ask.

I run arch btw

TuxedoOS has been seamless, runs KDE, and all updates are checked for compatibility

TBH Ubuntu, or if you have an older/lower spec machine xubuntu

I found the main issue with many non-rolling release distributions are the upgrade instructions from one stable release to the next, and not the difficulty of installing them.

I'm myself a Archlinux guy, but that does sometimes require some carefulness and regularly (at least weekly) applying updates and does not have stable automatic updates, so I started installing Fedora atomic desktop distributions (Fedora Silverblue/Kinolite/etc.) for people that just want to use their device for basic stuff.

The reason for that is long term maintainability without an expert at hand.

I had so many bad experiences updating distributions from one stable version to the next, be it Debian and Ubuntu-based, or Fedora-based distributions.

And with those atomic desktop distributions the amount of moving parts is much lower, so hopefully upgrading them to newer releases is much more stable.

So I would suggest giving Fedora Silverblue (Gnome desktop), Kinolite (KDE) or Budgie Edition a try.

Linux mint (Cinnamon is my fav). You can never go wrong.

Maybe

Ubuntu. There are mixes of it but out of the box Ubuntu is about as straightforward a dist to install as possible and it is well supported.

That said "new laptop" and Linux are not always a match made in heaven. You might try it from a boot stick and confirm that things like the GPU, touch screen, touchpad, fingerprint reader, USB C / Lightning all work properly.