I started out on MX Linux as my intro to linux back in early 2024 and it was partly because of their SystemD stand, and partly because the distro shipped with a lot of nice custom GUI tools for noobs like myself.
It's also a quite lightweight distro if you choose SysVinit + Fluxbox. I'm just a bit sad they no longer offer a 32-bit version.
The only reason I switched away was because the Debian base felt quite stale, that is, for what I wanted to play around with. Still kept it around for a year.

“So my suggestion for those in the US, and other countries, is to lobby your government representatives, federal, state, or whatever your country has, and not your linux distro.”

Good idea! And here I was just about to send death threats to Dylan Taylor.