I found this site a while back - basically it will ask you a bunch of questions on your usage of your PC, and will came out with a list of recommended distros, and a list of reasons why YOU could like or not like it.
There are some similar sites to this one, but since I’m not familiar with them, I won’t post them. They are simply DuckDuckGo-able though.
I agree that it’s a bad recommendation. That was my first distro and the dated look was a huge turn off and a bad first impression for Linux. It just feels like a downgrade from Windows or MacOS, which makes for a terrible transition.
What Mint offers that many other distros don’t is that it generally works well right out of the box, with just the initial install and no other tweaks, because it has proprietary drivers and other bells and whistles pre-installed. But so does Zorin and Pop_OS and both look much better. Those would probably be my top recommendations for a new user. All 3 of those distros have lots of online support (plus the general Ubuntu support that will usually be applicable as well).