You will get comments both ways on this, but I have put lots of people on Linux Mint and they never once had to use a terminal unless they wanted to. Make no mistake, what you can do in a terminal is magic compared to what you can do without it, but you can survive just fine without it. I would suggest also looking at Zorin, and if you really want something different I strongly recommend Bodhi. Most of the distros which are easy for new users are on a Debian or Ubuntu base (Ubuntu is on a Debian base, but a lot of people forget that).

PineTime is currently $24.95 plus shipping

Moksha Heck, just install Bodhi Linux 7, your choice between Ubuntu based or Debian based.

Everyone moved to NextCloud by now

I have not had a problem using ProtonVPN on Linux.

The only VPNs which are not owned by marketing companies are Mullvad and Proton. The largest VPNs are owned by Kape Technologies, renamed because their prior company name distributed malware, whose top people are former Israeli military, so I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. I would never use a free VPN except for Proton, and Proton’s paid VPN has a lot more nodes and features.

Not the best description I have seen. Any wall that can keep someone out can keep someone in. Just have to change the system inside. The big problem, however, is that nobody understands the term communism and applies it to lots of things which are not. A totalitarian state is not communism. And a Christian nationalist state is no longer a democracy.