Would that run on an Alienware M18 laptop?
*All* the hardware drivers work?
What about apps and software?
I have a ton of software I love.
That is the issue that has kept me from Linux, over the years.
You can run a CD only install to try it out to see if it works for your hardware. This works with Ubuntu, I don’t know for sure about Mint but I expect so. I am going to install Mint in a VirtualBox so that I can see the differences. Currently using Ubuntu and it has worked for years for me so...inertia
Hardware? Probably. Software? Probably not. Sometimes (if you tinker long enough) you can hack Wintel programs and make them function (more or less) - but software writers have issues even making their products run on different flavors of Windows.