Fedora will always be my go-to, and the KDE spin should be pretty familiar layout wise for former windows users.
Since you have an nvidia gpu, Pop OS will probably be your best bet if you need it working immediately.
I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu anymore, as it’s been pushing snaps (package manager) MS-style, and it’s gotten some shit from the community for various reasons over the years.
Linux Mint is also good, too. It’s very easy to just get up and going, perfect for people who aren’t familiar with Linux, too.
That’s about what I would have done. Try to switch to a console first like you did, but if that doesn’t work, force reboot and pray.
The worst that could happen is that you might have some data loss or mess up the OS (which has happened to me before). That’s why you should always have an up-to-date backup! It’ll save you one of these days.
Either way, try switching to a different proton version, or do some other fixes and test it out until it stops crashing. This honestly sounds like a freak (but common) problem. I wouldn’t worry about data loss or corruption that much if there’s no other signs of it (e.g., SMART reporting a dying drive), but a backup is generally helpful for any scenario.