Lots of firmware and driver updater programs seem to require Windows or Mac and I can’t get them to run with wine. For example, I need Win to update the firmware on my car stereo and my 8bitdo game controllers. I also need it to run the tax software my CPA uses.

Can you use an adblocking DNS provider to circumvent this?

I agree that it’s a bad recommendation. That was my first distro and the dated look was a huge turn off and a bad first impression for Linux. It just feels like a downgrade from Windows or MacOS, which makes for a terrible transition.

What Mint offers that many other distros don’t is that it generally works well right out of the box, with just the initial install and no other tweaks, because it has proprietary drivers and other bells and whistles pre-installed. But so does Zorin and Pop_OS and both look much better. Those would probably be my top recommendations for a new user. All 3 of those distros have lots of online support (plus the general Ubuntu support that will usually be applicable as well).

Very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to run these tests and share your results!

I didn’t realize you can have an OS ISO and other programs on the same USB stick. I thought the live boot ISO had to be the only thing on the stick (or multiple ISOs using Ventoy).