Definitely Bazzite, I also love Zorin but IMO that's more an "Install on your dad's laptop" OS than something for someone who knows how to install an OS.
Lemmy moderation is heavily instance-dependent. Some are more strict than reddit, and others less. You are on Lemmy.world which is moderated with a pretty light touch, so you'll probably be happy :)
I know you're getting a million suggestions and to be clear- nothing is wrong with Mint, but I recommend Fedora Kinoite as a first distro if you're coming from Windows. KDE is going to be more familiar and the way the backend is designed makes it basically impossible to meaningfully break.
I honestly feel that online Linux communities are the biggest barrier to more widespread adoption. As with any online space, unless the people in charge want to ban toxicity, it will always, always, take over any community.
I'm glad at least one of them went with Bazzite. If you had never used a Windows computer before, Bazzite "just works" for games even more seamlessly than Windows.
The problem (I was guilty of this for years) is that people who are techie enough to know about Linux are much more likely to see a "mainstream" distro and assume they would prefer something more specific.
They aren't really in competition, also AppImages don't update as easily.