How do I get started Linux?

I'm a windows loser looking to make the plunge into Linux. I was thinking of switching my gaming PC to Linux in the near future. Before I make up my mind, I'll probably try out VMs of distros.

I've lurked a few Linux communities here and on lemmy.ml, some I'm gonna regurgitate some things I half remember in the hope of being being corrected and starting discussion about what I should be doing.

• Ubuntu isn't good
• Mint is good despite being based on Ubuntu. Made with former windows users in mind
• Debian is good because of their packages or package manager or something. Recently sold out, but there are spinoffs that don't use proprietary software like Duvian.
• Fedora seemed to get some good word but I can't remember why.
• Arch and it's spinoffs require a shit ton of finagling to get right but can do a lot of cool things
• There are different desktop environments like GNOME, Cinnamon, and ... others? I honestly don't know what a desktop environment is.
• Wine (or the fork Proton) can run windows native games on Linux
• There are snap, flat something or other, and ... other ways for installing software.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot and got some things wrong. Any help getting started is appreciated.

Edit: I ended up going with a KDE plasma spin of Fedora 36. Once I figured out how to get the nvidia drivers set up it was smooth sailing.