Comment by gerdesj
Kubuntu.
KDE is generally considered close to a Windows experience, although, I'm afraid the "start" menu is still affixed to the left hand side and not in the middle of the taskbar (which is weird). It also doesn't bother with too much telemetry and all that stuff.
Kubuntu is Ubuntu but with the KDE front end, instead of the Gnome one or whatever it is. Being Ubuntu it supports Secure Boot which ticks a box.
It is just as easy to install as any other mainstream Linux distro, which is very easy. Its also quite easy to upgrade. I do recommend that you stick to Long Term Supported (LTS) releases.
I took a customer's "redundant" laptop (destined for land fill, too old, ran slow for Win10) about five years ago and repurposed it for my grand-daughter and stuck Kubuntu on it. If you recall we were heading into Covid related lockdown back then and this was for her to access school remotely.
She is still using it! I have updated it from 18.04 to 24.04 remotely through an OpenVPN tunnel. Try doing that with Windows ...
Win <= 10 had left side taskbars so that should actually be a plus. I didn't quickly update to Win 11 because of it being in the middle really, then because of the ads, then swore off it because of the AI stuff so in the end it kind of helped that they messed up the UI.