IMO there's no single "best", or even a few "bests". Everybody's got their own preferences including for picking a distro, how it installs, what the options mean to them, and then of course how to configure it for their own use.
That said, I've installed Linux, mostly Ubuntu, on hundreds of computers since about 2001: RedHat/RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, Debian, SuSE, Raspberry, and for the past decade or so, almost all Ubuntu, both Desktop versions and headless Server versions.
Every one has its peculiarities and quirks, things it does better or worse than some other variant.
All that said, I tend to recommend Ubuntu Desktop, or Mint for a true novice. They're both pretty trivial to install if you're willing to work with their defaults during installation.
So first time out, take all the defaults and see how you like it, without committing to it. Then if you think you want to customize the installation, wipe and re-install, with whatever you learned from the first time.
My old but capable PC runs Mint, which sees lots of use for browsing and email (not by me) yet i found today that it could not even open a PDF. Which is the best Linux version for Mint for that?