Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it. Between 2003 and 2013 he really used to believe that pedophilia doesn’t harm children. But he really only mentioned it a few times and hadn’t talked about it again until 2019 when it was brought up again. He said then that he had changed his mind since and that he was wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies).

I don’t think we should cancel people for believing something stupid 10 years ago, but his haters love to use this. Just like they like to misquote him or spread fake rumors about him (https://stallmansupport.org). They are probably too angry to think clearly or verify information, but sometimes I wonder if for some of them it’s really only about his position on proprietary software (he wants to destroy it) and that’s why they wanted him removed from the FSF.

Can I start with Gentoo or is that too easy?

I would say that security and privacy are also very important. That’s something you can’t get with Windows.

Congratulations! Next you might want to learn about the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.

Windows has spyware, so that should be enough reason to not use it for someone like you. You will have to spend some time to learn GNU/Linux, but for most office tasks it shouldn’t be difficult, especially if you are good with computers. Most popular distros already come with a PDF viewer and Libre Office, so it should be able to do almost everything you want out of the box. VLC player can play all common video types and is easy to install. Libre Office might have issues with some Word documents though, so you might need to look into that. A web browser (usually Firefox) and probably some email client will be preinstalled as well.

You might need to check if your printer and scanner will be supported out of the box or if extra drivers from the manufacturer are needed (then check if they are available on their website). I think printers will probably work fine out of the box, but scanners might require extra drivers (this depends on the model - there are models that don’t).

If you need more motivation, look into the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

GNOME also has an app that lets you do encrypted incremental backups very easily.

Software is usually installed from repositories and not random websites, so there is less room for user error in general. Even if you download an executable file, you will most likely have to give it permissions to run first. So I think it’s more immune to viruses not because of its users, but because of the way it’s designed.

it’s a smaller target and that hackers aren’t spending as much time trying to attack it

It’s the most popular server system, so I’m not so sure about that.

It’s a discussion about ethics. Proprietary software is unethical.