Right now I have Linux Mint Cinnamon running in a Virtual box. Tomorrow I'm going to run out to get an extra USB stick and try to run it from there to make sure everything works. The virtual box environment gives me weird quirks. Ultimately I'm switching regardless because Windows has annoyed me that much, but I'm not super tech savvy so trying to take baby steps into it.

I haven't played around with mint too much. Seemed pretty good though. I ended up going with Ubuntu when I ditched windows in 2020.

I always give this piece of advice, though now it might be outdated (I haven't used Windows since XP) : something working different than Windows doesn't mean it's bad or broken. Keep an open mind that the way things are done might be different, which sometimes will make you happy and sometimes will make you upset. But at the very least your computer will be yours and not a rental from Microsoft.