Only asterisk I’d add to that is that if your plan is to do any more gaming than just basic stuff I’d go straight to CachyOS, or maybe Fedora KDE, openSUSE Tumbleweed or anything similar.
Mint is great for basic usage, but right now that kinda also locks you into X11. So if you plan to use multiple monitor at different framerates, VRR, HDR or generally better frame-pacing you need Wayland, preferably KDE or Gnome, and Mint just isn’t there yet. Emphasis on the -yet- though. Once they’ve overcome that hurdle it’ll probably become THE unconditional beginner distro once again.
I know this is one of my hotter takes, but IMO rolling release vs. stable has no influence on how beginner-friendly a distro is, at least not in a one-size-fits-all manner.
Particularly for gaming, I’d say a rolling release distro is a much better fit because bugs with new games and hardware will be gone much faster than what you’d see in something slower moving.
Only asterisk I’d add to that is that if your plan is to do any more gaming than just basic stuff I’d go straight to CachyOS, or maybe Fedora KDE, openSUSE Tumbleweed or anything similar.
Mint is great for basic usage, but right now that kinda also locks you into X11. So if you plan to use multiple monitor at different framerates, VRR, HDR or generally better frame-pacing you need Wayland, preferably KDE or Gnome, and Mint just isn’t there yet. Emphasis on the -yet- though. Once they’ve overcome that hurdle it’ll probably become THE unconditional beginner distro once again.
A rolling release distro like openSUSE Tumbleweed is not for noobs.
I know this is one of my hotter takes, but IMO rolling release vs. stable has no influence on how beginner-friendly a distro is, at least not in a one-size-fits-all manner.
Particularly for gaming, I’d say a rolling release distro is a much better fit because bugs with new games and hardware will be gone much faster than what you’d see in something slower moving.