I am so thankful for this sane, no-nonsense distro. It's a breath of fresh air in an ocean of design decision insanity.

(Obviously whether anybody will feel this way will be a matter of personal preference.)

Honest question to Mint users: have used Debian and Ubuntu with i3 and gnome over the past ~10 years. Why should I use Mint? Thanks!

I used Ubuntu and later Ub Mate for about 15 years. Unfortunately, it has been deteriorating steadily. Fighting obnoxious snaps and breaking classic themes etc. Small regressions every release adding up. The lack of investment was becoming impossible to miss.

Then I tried Mint Cinnamon and it felt a lot better. More modern, but gratuitous change avoided. Many rough edges fixed.

I still have some quibbles, software is getting old (stuck on LTS), and doesn't support wayland, which I plan to move to in the near future.

Also have Fedora KDE, Wayland on a travel laptop, and liking it almost as much. Took a long time to reign in kde, and while still messy it is mostly tamed to my liking. (With exception of konsole's context menu, which makes me annoyed every day. May install kitty or?)

You shouldn't, you are not the target audience.

Congratulations on the release!