I used Ubuntu once a few years ago but had compatability issues so I went back to windows. Not a great programmer but I'd like to learn. I'm not looking to do much gaming beyond DOOM2 and factorio. Mostly looking for privacy and a way to get back into programming (I have this pipe dream of learning Assembly). I'm not to particular on UI, I can use whatever.
Edit: https://distrochooser.de for anyone who stumbles upon this post with the same question
I highly recommend ZorinOS for newbies.
Alternatively: openSUSE (if you don't like terminals), Fedora (required some customization via terminal for me), endeavourOS (just works, arch-based, but the install didn't work on my old PC for some reason).
I recommend KDE over Gnome for the desktop environment.
Seconding KDE. Imo new users will avoid a lot of frustration with Plasma.
I actually found Plasma as a new user very frustrating, but you can customize it into perfection without needing any extras and it generally just works. Gnome you need to download extra stuff to customize and it frequently doesn't work, because their corpo hates people adjusting stuff for themselves, for whatever reason.
I can see that too. For me, coming to GNU/Linux as a windows power user, with Gnome, I just felt so limited and unempowered. Switching to Plasma helped me feel in control of my machine.