Thanks for this! I’m so glad to see an audible alternative.

EDIT: I signed up for a free trial and will give it a go. Bummed to see they have a much smaller selection but I guess that’s expected with Amazon’s muscle.

I know it got sold twice and I am worried about the future but I believe they still have the same purchase and download options for now.

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).

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).