Have you tried Arch Linux?...I am looking at starting with it...I have decided in my old age to learn a new language. And I know very little about operating systems...so it is going to be interesting. I have a “new” refurbished computer to play with it on.
I put 64G of memory on my laptop last year for the purpose of running VMs. with some health issues this year, I have not been able to get to that. Maybe I can start with Arch....
Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. So is my Pop!_OS that I'm running. Debian-based systems are ok-ish, but I personally prefer Red Hat-based systems like Fedora. I find their package management easier to use and less clunky.