Mint is great. It also works well out of the box in virtual machines. I like the MATE versions for my older machines.
There is a major shift happening right now, and mint is slower than many to adopt changes. I’d argue that’s good for mint users, but it may be bad for you personally if you plan to learn about modern linux. Idgaf personally about X11 vs Wayland, because I just need to be able to use my programs.