It's shocking how this focus on quarterly stock price increases and other financial chicanery has left the West unable to plan and execute more than a few months in advance...
This stuff should ring alarm bells for anyone who studied history, because these are 1920s/1930s Germany-style micro movements.
Naziism didn't start with the Final Solution. It didn't start with work camps. It didn't even start with the beer Hall putsch. It started with things like this.
Did you use the Debian edition of Mint? Debian doesn't include a lot of proprietary drivers and/or firmware blobs with its standard edition.
I can't say that's the case here, but it's possible that Mint is either using Debian as a base, or at least following the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
There's usually a nonfree firmware deb you can use, post installation. If you can complete the install and connect to the internet via the 7480's Ethernet port, you should be able to get the wifi card working.
Not even businesses want this, it's just performative cruelty at this point.