I use and love debian a lot for servers because it is super stable and relatively lightweight, but I definitely would not recommend it for desktops/notebooks, especially not to people new to linux based systems.
It's super purist about foss, which means you only get free and open source software (no steam, discord, etc) per default and it uses an older kernel (which makes it more stable, but less feature rich and less compatible with new hardware).
If you use something like fedora, linux mint (as far as I heard) or even ubuntu, your experience would probably be a lot better.
Of course it would, at least for some of them.. You can't seriously believe that people cannot change their minds, especially conservatives, who often only have their views because of living in a bubble.
Let them try. Let them actually lay out and present their twisted worldview. And if you don't want to see it or hear about it, fine, block their space. It's much more likely that they will change than it is for a leftist to change because the vast majority of leftists are actually familiar with the right and their believes. The other way around is generally a different story..