i cut my teeth on linux mint with cinnamon before moving to garuda dragonized. it was my daily driver for the last four years, then i switched to proxmox and just run everything on VMs ๐คท
lots of resources and documentation available for mint, but it's pretty turnkey. best advice i'd give to a newfriend is make sure you read any articles or documentation start to finish, instead of trying to follow along. also, employ good backups practice: learn what timeshift/snappy is, how it works, and how to use it.
taking a backup before making big changes has saved my ass more than once
one of mine is an old flash video that i think i remember was on newgrounds, that had a black guy and a white guy talking to each other.
the only things i can remember is the black guy saying, "i feel ashamed and neglected," and white guy saying "I WILL NOT STOP UNTIL I GET THE ANSWERS THAT I CRAVE"