I know, it sounds odd, but: Arch! Once my best friend wanted to try linux. So he asked me, which distro to use. I gave him an honest answer: “I use Arch. But for beginners I would recommend Mint.” He don’t gave a shit and installed Arch anyways 😅 - with success! That’s when I noticed, that the Arch Wiki is actually SO GOOD, that even a newbie can install Arch without any help. It’s just a bit more time expensive, compared to distros with an installer. However, there are some huge benefits, that made me switch to Arch:

• I used Ubuntu on my daily driver before. However “stable” packages means in this case “antique”. A 3 years old version of Sway isn’t more stable than the newest release version.
• I never survived a dist-upgrade. That’s why i prefer a roling release linux today.
• Your system is slim, because you only install what you really need. Also you know your system this way.
• Especially for gaming it’s good to have the newest kernel + drivers.

However, you should also notice the down sides. Sometimes an update breaks something. It doesn’t happens often, but it happens. A few years ago the bluetooth stack was broken, so i wasn’t able to use my headset during a meeting. However they released a fix like a few hours later, so I just needed to update. But still: That’s something to consider too.

Another hint: Even if Lutris claims to be for games, there are often install scripts for windows applications too. So it may be worth to try to run your apps with Lutris. It should be in the mint packages (try sudo apt install lutris). Then you can add your software in Lutris with the upper left “+” button. Just use the search in the dialog box. I managed to run FL Studio like this, exactly as performant as on windows. Good luck and welcome to the linux family!