I’m not suavevillain, but I recently switched to PopOS after a love hate relationship with Windows. I would leave Windows, then come crawling back for one reason or another, this stint is the longest I’ve had staying away from it.
I personally like PopOS. But for a less bloated environment and easy to spin up system, you could look at Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.com/).
The LDS church has been doing pretty much this same thing for a very long time. It’s why you see wards and church property adjacent to almost every public high school in the north western states. They have also ruled politics in their more populous areas.