TBH, once stop running Windows, everything gets easier. And if your running Ubuntu or Mint, it's not even that painful to start and hardware more or less just works.
Debian is nice for servers, but it's a little out of date for desktop. YMMV, welcome to the club and ignore the snobs ❤️
You should really try the GitHub CLI, it's amazing. I only use the GUI for tweaking settings and browsing here and there. Everything else you can do from JetBrains / Viscose native, including PRs.
Yeah, did you find mint easy to use? I'm in Ubuntu and thinking about switching. I just worry about driver support, cause everything works on Ubuntu for me. I try and apt get everything I can TBH.
Plus the work great with after market stuff.