You got a lot of distro recommendations from across the spectrum and it’s honestly hard to go wrong with any of them. It’s mostly a matter of preference. As such I’ll give you two pieces of advice:

1. Set up a multi-boot flash drive (assuming you’re currently using Windows, YUMI is a great utility) so that your can try a bunch of them and see what jives with you most. A great feature of Linux installers is that you can actually run the entire OS, full-featured, from the ISO. So grab a whole slew of them, throw them on the flash drive, and spend some time taking them for a spin.
2. Do your research on compatibility. Laptop makers often don’t make Linux drivers, so the latest hardware has compatibility problems until the community covers the gap. There are also some laptop manufacturers that have Linux in mind when they make their products, like System 76 and Framework.

Good luck! IMO getting into Linux for the first time is a fun journey. Enjoy it!

I’m in IT too. My experience is that if you use Linux at home and Windows at work you just end up skilled at both. At one point I was even using a Macbook at work (wouldn’t have even been a consideration if WSL was just a little better), using a Windows jump server or a VM for my Windows-y ops, and I became skilled at all 3 OS’s.

All of that is to say that your skill won’t decrease if Windows is still being used, especially if you’re using it in a professional context.

LinkedIn and Indeed mostly, though I do check my resume against the listing using stuff like jobscan.co to play the stupid match-the-keywords game to rank myself as high as possible. The response rate sucks but I do get responses, and I think shitty response rates for applications via job boards is kinda common in general. In my area (both geographically and career-wise I suppose) there are also plenty of recruiters looking for people to get in the door, which gets you past the AI gatekeeper. Though recruiter activity has slowed down in the past year and it’s not a time of plenty anymore they’re still around.

As with anything YMMV. So many variables, and surely some luck has played a part in my experience.

That’s entirely dependent on experience. Low to no experience? Get certs. In today’s age of AI powered resume screens, even with experience if what you’re pursuing is a position lower on the totem poll then you will still need them to get through the AI. Probably want a higher-value cert than CompTIA if you wanna work in IT but don’t want to stay trapped in the help desk (I’m talking a networking cert, a cloud cert, ITIL, etc). The most common career path is through the help desk but one doesn’t need to stay there.

Once one gets a decent amount of experience certs don’t really matter. In fact, I climbed up the early rungs of the IT ladder by selling my experience with stuff in my home lab and selling my ability to learn. I don’t have a single cert and never have. I misrepresented nothing about myself, but I did need to eat some below-market-pay jobs at first to rack up real experience to sell. Nobody really cares about the cert, it’s a knowledge industry and what matters is what you know and what you’ve done.