Linux

Microsoft pays extra attention to Ubuntu LTS and RHEL. Not my first choices, but in particular you'll see stuff like AAD auth on Azure VPN supported on Ubuntu LTS. There will also be some work going into proper Intune support, if that matters.

I would prefer Fedora or Debian for a more stable environment, and use Arch at home, but we have to keep interoperability in mind sometimes.

Another thing to look into, and I really hate to since Broadcom bought them, but you can run Windows inside VMWare, and use unity mode to break individual windows out into your DE. Beware of the new licensing.

Any distro.

Use a Windows VM for things that are unavailable or don't work well as a web app. The absolute easiest way to run a Windows VM is VMware Player especially if you use a stable OS like Debian or Ubuntu LTS. The built-in KVM hypervisor works fine too but it requires more work to setup a Windows VM with all the drivers, shared folder, etc. And it won't have graphics acceleration of any sort. With that said I've personally migrated from VMware to KVM in anticipation that Broadcom who recently purchased VMware will turn their software to shit or start asking for more money, or both.

Linux won't give you much more privacy in your case. I would recommend storing and manipulating your personal data on a separate Linux machine and please don't store anything except what's absolutely necessary on OneDrive. Though if you can't afford a separate machine, you can run Linux to get at least some improvement. I think the only DE that has good MS cloud support is the latest version of GNOME so you need a distro with that DE. It can be Ubuntu 24.04 (or something based on it) or a rolling release. The last one may be more difficult to use in some cases but idk any other somewhat user friendly options.

I always go for Linux desktop at a job. Office 365 runs just fine in a browser. Not ideal, but MS will never give up teams to a Linux Installer again. They took down the 1 they had which wasn't great but still worked

Basically it doesn't matter if you can use the webapps.

Mint is the best traditional noobie distro, while I would suggest Silverblue, if you just want to use a robust system that requires far less maintenance effort than a traditional distribution with limitations that may are may not affect you at all.

No distro can just do that.

Try crossover, which is said to have best Windows app support. But Microsoft is actively fighting it, on their apps.

Your school is very, very, very shitty.

Office 365 runs out of the box on Crossover.

See wubuntu, it has OneDrive client https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-ubuntu/