Not too long ago I installed Mint onto a laptop that turned out to have a network card by Broadcom, which doesn’t have Linux support, so that didn’t work. I’m going to upgrade my currently Windows PC to Mint at the end of Win10 support in October, and I want to be sure I don’t have any hardware that is incompatible with Linux. Which manufacturers are obstinate like that?
Just make a live usb of the distro you want to use and check it out. If mint has no live usb usr amother distro, most have. Just use a big one. Since mint is just ubuntu it should be good
linux mint’s “installers” can boot into a live environment.
Another vote for trying a live distro. If the live version detects all your computer’s hardware, it will detect it when you install it for real.
You can absolutely use Mint as a live system.