Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is my pick.

I’ve got two study laptops and apart from Tailscale giving me some grief very recently with DNS resolution, I literally haven’t had any problems with either machine. Both have been going for 1.5 years.

I like the LMDE route for the DE already having pretty decent defaults and not requiring much tweaking from the get-go. Xfce (as it ships by default in Debian) absolutely works, but I end up spending an hour theming it and adding panel applets and rearranging everything so that it… ends up looking similar to Cinnamon anyway, because default Xfce looks horrible in my opinion

Having autism in a family that even today, isn’t fully educated on the matter, my family still brings up how much I hated the air compressor as a kid and would instantly start crying (from the loud noise).

This isn’t the first time they’ve had an ad supported Office for free. Anyone remember Office 2010 Starter, that shipped with only Word and Excel and also had a permanent ad banner.