This excitement is half the fun, I guess. Should make for some interesting memories in the future.

I never got too deep into distros honestly. My early attempts were very rough, very short and limited to Mint and basic Ubuntu I think (they were in a worse shape back then). When I made my last attempt to switch I stumbled onto Pop!_OS and found it to be exactly what I needed. It looks good, runs well and has all the necessary drivers and libraries to play games without issues. I've been using it for almost 7 years now and I'm quite happy with it.

It's Ubuntu based too so might be worth a look if that's what you're interested in. It IS using a customised GNOME for now but they're working on their own desktop environment to replace it with. They also have a handy tutorial if you'd rather change it yourself.