There isn’t a default beginner distro anymore.
There are a dozen good choices with half a dozen different default desktop environments, all with their pros and cons.
But as a beginner, you have no idea what’s best for you.
It used to be a lot easier to choose your first distro, back when Ubuntu was still good (looong ago).
IMO Mint could be it, if they used Plasma instead of Cinnamon, which still doesn’t support Wayland.
There isn’t a default beginner distro anymore.
There are a dozen good choices with half a dozen different default desktop environments, all with their pros and cons.
But as a beginner, you have no idea what’s best for you.
It used to be a lot easier to choose your first distro, back when Ubuntu was still good (looong ago).
IMO Mint could be it, if they used Plasma instead of Cinnamon, which still doesn’t support Wayland.
I don’t know about Cinamon as I’ve never used it, but I would never recommand KDE Plasma to a beginner.
It’s way too messy even if it’s really customizable.
Gnome is great, but I also think it’s too different from Windows for a beginner.