Btw, by far the most convincing windows 95 theme is chicago95, for which you need xfce. Except for the start menu, it is indestiguishable. You just need solitaire through wine and you're good to go :)
There's already a thousand comments, but I'll give my opinion anyway. Debian is by far the most reliable distro I have ever used. It's easier to install than arch in my opinion, and is completely rock solid. However, if you have at least a year experience with linux and you like tinkering, nothing beats arch. I don't recommend using distros like pop_os, endevour os, or manjaro, simply because once you have a bit of experience, it just introduces more points of failure.
Btw, by far the most convincing windows 95 theme is chicago95, for which you need xfce. Except for the start menu, it is indestiguishable. You just need solitaire through wine and you're good to go :)