I installed Mint now and so far I have to say I'm very happy, although it's only been a few hours. It's easy to understand and for everything that I don't I can find something online, now that I know what I'm looking for.
Remember to not download anything from the internet since software is designed to be installed via the software manager which uses apt or flatpak under the hood.
I can count on one hand how many times I downloaded a program outside of the playstore. I'll basically do the same thing from now on my PC.
8-9$? Holy shit, that is expensive. Here in Germany a 10 pack organic eggs is somewhere around 3€.