Just made the switch to Nobara Linux on my desktop and ill probably go with Mint on my ancient laptop tomorrow. My only hang up was games but it seems like compatibility is a lot better nowadays so hopefully I can fully switch over. Same for windows only programs and Wine.
As Nobara is Fedora based and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian, perhaps stay in this eco system and use some Fedora spin/derivate on the Laptop as well.
Good luck with the transition away from Windows!
Personally, I use KDE on Debian and it works great on my 2011 Laptop.
I just think, especially for a beginner, remembering the ‘under the hood’ commands, e.g. package managers, different preconfigurations of installed packages e.t.c., for such different distributions is probably quite challenging.
