Love me some GNU/Linux! Mint is the best for noobies.
Discussion
Not Mint, Cinnamon Desktop Environment. Evert GNU/Linux beginner should know that every part of the OS can be changed.
Mint is not a stable distro as competitors. Better try Debian/Ubuntu with a different DE.
(Btw Mint is for me the equivalent of a shitcoin)
Why do you think that?
TLDR: No consistent use case
Premise: open source Is good also because permits forking the code, but is not all gold.
A lot of derivated-distros was made out of the main 4 (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat, Arch) some with a valid use case (Tails-privacy, Kali-pentesting) and some without (Hannah Montana Linux, ZorinOS and so on).
Linux Mint acquired popularity when Ubuntu decided to radically change its default graphical interface, proposing an Ubuntu clone + Cinnamon DE as default.
GNU/Linux permits to change the DE before and after the installation (it also exists an official Cinnamon version of Ubuntu) so Mint is useless, a copy of a copy, a waste of work.
I don't like suggesting good looking, poor maintained derivated distros.
As for a shitcoin it's (relatively) easy to fork but difficult to maintain.
So, don't do distro hopping, just do your customization.
I see your very valid points.
I came to your last sentence 10 years into my linux journey, that incidentally it was the beginning of me using gnome as default DE.
Using extensions made everything better for me, without the need of changing my OS.
As for distro-hopping, imho it's best if beginners do distro-hop because changing de often leads to fucked up dependencies and unevenness in the apps (gtk apps on kde 🤢).
Plus trying new distros makes you learn something new everytime.