I'll check out the Pinebook and Linux Mint, thank you for the concrete suggestions!

> at this point the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could, this isn't the 90s anymore.

That's good to hear! I used Ubuntu in University for a short while and it seemed quite well developed, the problem was that I was bound to some tools that were only available on Windows/Mac, such that I couldn't adopt it as my main OS. Anyways I appreciate your constructive input, thanks.