For sure, you never lose your right to complain. But be fair to yourself too, even if you complained incessantly, you stuck it out (and what is a Linux user without incessant complaining?).

The point is what you said though, they could very easily solve an issue that could be preventing a large group of potential users from adopting… because the maintenance team doesn’t want to update the installation guide or the file names. Again, it’s a very Linux thing for them to take that position. And that’s why I end up recommending an Ubuntu spin to people, even though I think the whole package that Mint presents is nicer out of the box.

I love Mint. It’s still my favorite Debian-rooted distro, even though I moved on from it more than a decade ago. But their refusal to adapt their install image to newbie-proof it frustrates me so much. I can’t think of another mainline distro that’s given me any problems in creating install media or installing, and that makes it impossible for me to recommended Mint to anyone who won’t have me over their shoulder during the install process.

I commend you for sticking to it and figuring out what the issue and fix were. 90% of users would have given up, reinstalled Windows, and went on Reddit to complain about how shitty Linux is.

I keep coming back to KDE time and time again. It’s so easy to mess with, I can set it up exactly how I like it without much effort, and it always looks good because someone else did all the work making themes and widgets I use.

That said, I love XFCE, I’m just trash with CSS so it takes me forever to get it how I like, and on my Surface I can’t get the scaling to work so everything is beyond tiny.

As others have mentioned, Debian stable and Xubuntu are my default recommendations for anyone who wants a simple “just works” kind of system. Debian if they want it to be as clean as possible, Xubuntu if they want some creature comfort right out of the box.