Thanks. Linux can have its place, and I installed Mint 9 on my older PC which is very fast and used (by a brother) mainly for political streaming and info, but as it cannot show much less configure many USB wireless adapters out of the box then I could not yet install it on another. In such a case it is hardly an easy switch.
I have always suggested 18.3, or now 20.x because of those very same USB issues. They are known, and others here have had the same hardware/motherboard problems on some machines with the whole 19.x series. The 18.3 and the 20 series do not. The 19 series was Mint’s Windows Vista style goof.
These seem to work just fine on Mint 19:
https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/usb-adapter/tl-wn725n/