While I agree philosophically and would prefer the Debian based version. I personally have had issues with it, myabe it’s my Nvidia graphics.

So for a beginner I would reccomend the version that is considered the “main” version at the moment. Currently it is still Ubuntu based afaik.

Why would anyone criticize Mint as a suggestion? It’s easy to use and stable. I have been using it on my main pc for abut a year with barely any issues (i had more problems on windows). I have tried other distros: mutable, immutable, rolling etc but I always come back to Mint if I want things to just work.

P.S. I have used ubuntu professionally for about 7 years and while I don’t always like it, it is still a solid choice.