In Chile I recall Microsoft sending a notification to my former worplace because someone used torrent to download a game from inside the company network. That person didn’t notice that all traffic was being routed to company’s VPN hosted in MS Azure.
ISPs don’t give a shit. The goverment has laws against piracy that are never applied (you know: Southamerica, the lawlessness). But gringo companies do care.
My advice is to avoid Google, MS and the big tech to follow your pirates activities. They may suspend services to you, or notifiy some local authority.
Use a different browser or machine for your big tech interactions, and you’ll be fine.
Chances are your friend’s secondary laptop doesn’t have extra resources for Gnome to run smoothly. Sad thing is nowadays Gnome is very heavy and bloated.
Also, he may try both distros live-usb. Maybe he don’t care about Mint looking outdated. But if he does, you may try Fedora live-usb and check if university wifi works properly.
It’s his laptop after all, so I believe your appreciations on the beauty of desktop environments are secondary.