Personally, I dislike Zorin, but I can see your point. I didn't know it was Zorin at the time I I just find paywalling some FOSS stuff that isn't entirely yours very weird, and I also don't think users should touch almost anything Ubuntu-based, especially new ones. Mint might be the exception, but it's not to my tastes as well personally.

I think I agree with my university's Linux Users Group recommendation of Fedora, though I personally use Debian.

Honestly, if Debian would tidy up their website, make the Calamares-based installers the default, and perhaps had an installer with backports kernel built-in, it could be the easiest distro out there - I think everything else in Debian is almost perfect for most people. They don't even have to compromise on all that "universal operating system" stuff - they could just offer multiple installers. As for the website, I can get why they need to use a static site with HTML4, but that shouldn't stop them from designing a simple-to-use website.

Also, had no idea you were also in this community. Pleasant surprise.