Yes Mint is a good choice for your migration. It has been put together in a way that makes it intuitive for a windows refugee. The menu layout has the “start” (mint) button bottom left with your apps in there.

The system apps are named obvious things like “software manager” and it has default apps installed to get you going.

Being derived from Ubuntu it is the best supported platform for commercial apps/games but with Ubuntu’s weird choices (snap etc) tidied up.

It’s the most recommended linux distro for beginners for a reason. It’s a solid reliable well thought out platform

I suspect the families of the dead civilians in Kyiv are even less happy

Ok we’re talking at cross purposes.

Yes, mullvad has a noble repo, it doesnt have a xia repo (which is the mint equivalent version name)

Attempting to add the mullvad repo using the old ubuntu instructions failed because noble =/= xia

Yes you can work around that but its not beginner level.

Op asked if Flatpaks was the answer whivh imho it isnt, the best answer is downloading the .deb

Really sorry, it’s too long ago to remember the exact error,

but IIRC

when you followed the ubuntu instructions for adding the repository it would kick an error because the command included a reference to noble and mint os name is xia so the contents of the osrelease when checked didnt match and it threw an error.

Could be wrong, I didnt document it.

The work around was to edit the commands.

All a moot point now as

a) the instructions now on the mullvad site don’t reference noble and

b) mullvad now appears to be in the mint store (which is how you should always install if possible

Not correct, only true if you’ve manually added the repo

Further to this, mullvad vpn and browser are now in the Mint store.

Download and install from there

EDIT

Apols, they’re not, I checked on the machine I had faffed around with to get the mullvad repo working. Please ignore

It’s reasonable advice. Mullvad is literally the only time I’ve found the ubuntu instructions to not work on mint

Where does mullvad say it’s not meant to be used on Mint ? I literally have it running on 5 mint devices.

Can’t see that on their website at a quick search

Saying it is not supported is not the same as not meant to be used

In fact to the contrary this references install for mint

https://mullvad.net/en/help/install-mullvad-app-linux

Got to the section that says

“Download and install the app”

For a command line explanation

Honestly though just download the .deb and double click on it out of the folder to get debi to install. It’s all gui and easy

Doesn’t always work - for example the mullvad browser won’t install on mint with the ubuntu instructions as OS version gets reported as Xia not noble (if I’m recalling the issue correctly it was 6-9 months ago)

Yes you can amend the commands to get it to work but it’s definitely not beginner level, I had to faff around for an hour or so before I worked it out

For mullvad vpn the client will tell you when there’s an update available by a very obvious flag in the app that you click on to download it then click/double click on the file out of the downloads to get debi to install it.

To answer the broader question, where ever possible install apps via software manager, that way they are updated with apt / update manager.

I would suggest using flatpacks sparingly as they are disk hogs.

Great advice.

Btw you don’t need -S to install a package, just

paru packagename

Works fine

Tuba is in the AUR