Yes, I know. I used a notebook with a 950 before and it worked perfectly fine. But with this new one I get too many error messages for now under Linux, many games and other stuff that worked pefectly fine on Linux on my old 2016 model Notebook, didn't work at all and the only thing I could find out is that this are some driver problems. I decided to wait a while and try again. No time for a neverending odysee of tinkering nowadays. I will try Kubuntu next month, hoping the newer Kernel will take care of my problems and if it works probably move to Linux Mint 23 later on.

We still use Win 10 at work. I prefer any Debian based Distro, but the differences between 10 and 11...

There is also Mint Debian if you want Mint. But honestly, distro doesn't matter at all to most users. Pick any desktop environment that looks nice to you and go for it.

To be fair, Mint does a good job of fixing the annoyances that Ubuntu introduces. It comes with Snap disabled by default, for example.

True; however, Debian's update schedule is its blessing AND a curse, and old packets may result in lacking features (which can be frustrating) and lackluster performance in certain applications. And while you can use Flatpaks for some of it, system tools are not installed this way, and sandboxing brings its own set of issues.

That's not to say Debian is bad on desktop - Debian 12 is great and it runs on my laptop and I couldn't be happier - but the limitations are there.

Also, as far as I'm aware, Mint does modify Ubuntu to exclude some of Canonical's "features"

Anyway, if you want a sleek up-to-date system that is completely independent of Ubuntu, Manjaro remains a solid pick. Rolling release means you'll get the latest and greatest, and packet retention means you don't have to dip into unstable territory that is the domain of pure Arch.

EndeavourOS is essentially Arch with bells and whistles.

Manjaro has a lot of things done differently.

Yes, Manjaro didn't have a stellar reputation in the past, but currently it's amazing and I'm more than happy to have it as my daily driver for over a year now. Best Linux experience overall.

(And yes, I can install and operate Arch)

Lol try to run the top 3 games and tell me.

Not so good for adobe shit unfortunately

As long as you don't have tons of peripherals, don't want to play Fortnite and don't need 200 pieces of software, and if you have enough knowledge, yes, it can be the solution. It's still difficult to do the swap for companies, or if you don't have any skills related to computers.