Oh my, you are really patient for putting up with all this for such a long time. Yes, I have slightly different components, not the exact same ones, but it was also a mess to get it to work properly.
Sorry for not answering your question, just wanted to say, I have a similar HP Laptop bought under similar circumstances and it IS Linux unfriendly (you cannot even update the BIOS without Windows). But Linux Mint handles it very well. It was the first distro that got the WiFi working without headaches and it also handles the AMD card well.
I hope someone can answer your actual question and you get something you're happy with.
Great and very informative read, also good advice for people who want to contribute but aren't able to write code.
The blog post is about KDE of course, but I think the idea isn't limited to that project. There was this post on Lemmy not so long ago where people were discussing other ways of contributing or how people help with open source projects. And there were quite a few who said they can't code but would like to help with other things (apart from donating money).
In January I read this post on the Linux Mint forums saying: "Wayland isn't expected to replace Xorg as default any time soon, not in 21.3, not in 22.x, but we want to be ready all the same."
A blog post in January stated that Linux Mint 22's "Cinnamon edition will include a new Nemo Actions Organizer". But that's all I know sadly.
Wow what a ride. Congrats on making it work, I'm not sure if I wouldn't have given up at some point. Great job!
About kissing M$'s ass, don't get me started on updating the BIOS on a HP Laptop, they require you to do that in Windows cause it's the only way to get their downloader to run. So it's not only Lenovo's Laptops that don't play nice with Linux.
People often forget that they also often have to tinker with making games work in Windows, because they are more familiar with the OS and get it done faster. Also I think you'd be surprised how many games just run without any tinkering at all nowadays. But then there are some that don't run at all, mostly due to invasive rootkit 'anti-cheats'. That's no real loss for me, I wouldn't install something like that on a Windows machine either.
Oh I completely forgot about RedHat! Yes, that was my first one too. Then Ubuntu was kinda the thing to go to and it worked for a good while until it just didn't work for me anymore.
Today I'm on Mint because it was the first distro I tried that was able to get the Wifi working on my super old/bad HP Laptop. I started to like it and then also moved to Mint on my desktop. Running it for a year now and since my PC isn't the youngest anymore, I doubt I will switch distro again anytime soon.
Sure, I just meant to avoid confusion if someone follows the suggestion to simply try Mint and then goes to "choose your DE" but then there is no Gnome or KDE for Mint to download.
Interesting to hear the difference to Fedora's Cinnamon though, since I've never tried that.
Proton should work well but if you have any questions you might wanna subscribe to
!linux_gaming@lemmy.ml, !linux_gaming@lemmy.world
I hope you will find everything you need and that the transition will be smooth!
Edit: Fixed the links, thanks bot.