I’m a noob myself and have found Kubuntu the best experience so far, although my laptop is a bit niche so a lot of the other distros didn’t work correctly.

I have never tried it myself, but as it seems to be a driver issue with the built in cam, I don’t see any reason why a USB one wouldn’t work

I run Kubuntu on my surface pro 8, with the surface linux kernal. Everything works except the webcam but I feel that will be fixed soon.