That really depends on you, keep in mind a lot of distro’s like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux are based off of Debian just using different repositories and with system files in different locations.

I personally went with Debian and have had little to no complaints, definitely BASH/Shell/Terminal heavy so if you’re not willing to learn BASH I would probably use an immutable distro that you can’t easily break like Bazzite.

I’m mostly into protecting my data

Debian. Not Ubuntu - just Debian. Or Linux Mint Debian Edition (Debian with Cinnamon on top).