I found out that xubuntu spams users including me, which to me is a no go.
I’m looking for a linux based ad free distro that lets me work with libreoffice, vlc, tbb, transmission, okular, pdfarranger, hexchat, gimp and ocr.
I’m going to use it to edit text, watch movies, download multimedia, chat and edit audio with audacity.
it’s not going to be a server and I’d like to work with the terminal as much as possible. At the same time, I’m a newbie.
Any distro can do what you need. Others have suggested Pop, Mint, Debian, Endeavour, and more. I’d agree with basically all of them. Really it comes down to what you prefer most.
Personally I’d lean more toward Debian as it’s a basic distro with very little extra bloat, loads of documentation, incredibly stable, etc. I always prefer a spartan, basic system I can add pieces to as I please, rather than a bunch of preloaded defaults that may or may not be to my taste. Again though, that’s just me.
Endeavour is great, but if you aren’t used to Arch, and how to maintain it, things can get sort of messy after a while (definitely need to make a good habbit of cleaning your package managers cache, as well as read up on what’s called a “pacdiff”. In general, Arch and its derivatives require research). It’s worth trying if you’re interested in rolling distros though.
Another might be OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. From what I hear, it’s a bit more stable and curated than Arch so it may be a better option if you’re inexperience with a rolling release. I’ve never personally tried it, but have heard lots of good things from causal and power users alike.