Mint has a common issue of destroying itself on updates. It happened again to a coworker of mine a week ago when he decided to give nix a go (we are both systems engineers/network engineers).

That and mint's GUI elements are a thin veneer. There is still a lot of legacy garbage. It isn't made with the premise of "this GUI needs to be rock solid". It seems to be built upon the old tired bullshit that nix users always trot out e.g. "most users only log into x y z site and make a document once in a while" or some shit. It simply isn't true.

Most users do a variety of things. Some may be complicated, some may not be. The reason I tell people that Zorin is the distro of choice for refugees is that Zorin understood the assignment (although there are some very specific areas where it offers too much choice to the user, but those are exceedingly minor) and realized that the GUI and UX centered around that GUI is everything. Especially when you are trying to court windows users.

It should be noted that I am quite familiar with *nix, and he is to some degree familiar with it. Another guy we work with switched to popos on a whim a little over a week ago. He said he's really enjoying it.