For the distribution itself, I usually recommend Linux Mint to most people just jumping into Linux for the first time, it's easy to use, has a familiar(ish) layout, and should work on just about everything out of the box. Fedora is another choice, but I try to stay away from corporate backed distributions.

And for the software side of things:

1. Matrix / Element for decentralized, and end-to-end encrypted communication
2. Firefox w/ uBlock Origin & Arkenfox's user.js for web browsing
3. LibreOffice for an office suite
4. Spotube as an open-source alternative to Spotify's proprietary client if you use Spotify
5. VLC media player for playing multimedia files & streaming videos
6. qBittorrent for torrenting
7. KeePassXC for local encrypted password storage, no cloud services needed

That should have you covered for most day to day browsing and content consumption!