This is a rather old post, but given that you've not received any answers yet, I hope replying isn't too inappropriate.
For the first question, I back up my files on a NAS using rsync. It's a command-line solution, but I stored the command in a .desktop file to make an icon in my app list that I can just click to back everything up to the correct places. Makes it easy, and wasn't too difficult to implement.
Your second question might depend on your hardware. I just set up a new laptop on linux mint and had to do significant amounts of troubleshooting, all of it involving the command line, because linux mint didn't come with or know about most of the drivers required. If you're using an older or more well-supported computer, it might work better out of the box. Most troubleshooting will probably be command-line, but there's a lot of support out there for that if you need it.
App-wise linux mint has a fairly robust software manager (app store) with a wide variety of apps on it that, for the most part, don't require a lot of troubleshooting. (I only recently switched over to mint from Ubuntu, and was impressed at how many apps you could access so easily, including a large variety of unofficial releases of software that isn't officially available on linux). Unless you're intent on building obscure software from source, installing and using applications should be fairly painless.
I can't speak to the stability of mint, since I haven't been using it for long enough. However, I used Ubuntu for five or six years and never had to reinstall it, so you could always look into Ubuntu if stability is important to you.
I recently learned that you can update the Linux kernel on mint to the newest stable and have a much larger set of drivers available right out of the gate that way. I am looking at a regular PC, no laptop.
My current plan is to find support for every bit of hardware I am using before switching.
Looking more and more likely I will do it within the next year or so.
Yeah, I installed a few drivers manually and then came across one that was, for some reason, only available via the newest kernel and not as a separate piece of software. I'd have updated the kernel before that one if I'd realised that it might have been able to fix my issues, but it hadn't come up as a possible solution until then. If you do figure all that out before actually installing the os, you'll probably have a better time than I did. :)
Glad you are liking Mint! Browse through the Software Manager to find tons of good programs (there is usually a link to their homepage for more info about them) or ask here for suggestions of Linux replacements for the Windows programs you've been using.
That’s awesome! I’m still dipping my toes into Linux Mint. I was hoping to use it as my main OS and save windows 10 only for games. Unfortunately my art programs don’t run at all on play on Linux or plain old WINE (I know there are native Linux apps for that, but I paid for SAI and my working files are in .sai format). So far, I’m only using Mint for my media libraries, and it works well for that and saves space on my Windows SSD. I have blackscreened my Linux once when trying on edit a video on kdenlive. Back to Shotcut for me!
Awesome sorry for the late reply I have only been using Linux Mint for a month and only found out this Magazine exists just now.
What DE were you using before?
LinuxMint
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