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.
what are you using to run VMs? I have used VMWare for years, but I had to reload my main desktop due to a drive issue, and have been unable to get it working, and since their sale to Broadcom, there is zero support, even for the paid product I have. I can't even get workstation to run existing VMs. Frustrating.