Also, the standard Mint is Ubuntu based. They do have a Debian one if that's what you actually downloaded. Either way, I don't see the point of it anymore. They should just be developing Cinnamon and letting the rest go, in my opinion. All they seemed to do last I checked was screw around making Ubuntu something it doesn't want to be. I'm rambling.

Fedora is worth trying. Or vanilla Debian, but honestly it makes some things more complicated for noobs. Last I looked even getting ISOs was a pain. Then lots of driver stuff.

I'm also on a ThinkPad though. Fedora is known to work well with them.