Enticed by the prospect of Flatpak/Flathub as the primary package management system/ app store, and the compatibility with .deb files -- I gave Linux Mint a go.
I tried installing LDME first (debian based), but couldn't get it to work with my old Dell hardware.
So I switched to Cinnamon (Ubuntu based). The codec and driver installation worked great.
Most of the Flatpak apps worked out-of-the-box. There were flatpaks for VScode, slack, chrome, sublime, spotify, etc. However, the Zoom one would not launch, so I had to install from their .deb file.
I could not get Docker's apt repo working though because it was looking for Ubuntu release names or something. So sadly I can't use it as my dev OS.
I opened issues with Zoom and Docker:
https://github.com/docker/desktop-linux/issues/190
https://community.zoom.com/t5/Meetings/2024-Linux-Bugs/td-p/159912