I want to start using Linux

I come from an era when, if you paid for something, you owned it. I'm done with being nickel and dimed by subscriptions, and I've never been ok with my data being bought and sold. With the moves Windows has been making, and what's going to happen with 12, I'm out. Done. Fuck you. Goodbye.

Now that my rant is over, the reason I'm here posting is I need a little guidance. I am by no means a "power user", but I'm not a dribbling idiot, either. Back in the late 90s I learned QBasic, Visual Basic, a little C++, HTML, and I've tinkered with basic Javascript.

Now I've seen a lot of post here on Lemmy, and I've looked around the net, and I've found some great resources to start learning the ropes, but I don't want to waste my time learning the "wrong" things (ie- a system I'll end up not using). First things first: what distro should I even go with? I've seen a lot of negativity towards Ubuntu on here, while it seems everyone's is elitist with Arch. Reading up on it, it seems like Arch is the way to go because it gives you complete control over what is in your system (which is what I really want). That being said, I want it to play nice with what I need it to do, which is primarily gaming (though I am looking into getting a Steam Deck), audio/video (pretty much all aspects from just watching/listening/streaming, to production and editing), email/web browsing, and your typical basic bitch computer use (word processing), with maybe a little hobbyist programming on the side.

Please let me know what you would recommend, why you recommend it, and any other helpful info you can think of!