Best Linux desktop for everyday use?
 

I have a 5 year old Dell Precision M3800 ultrabook, I've been running Mac OS on it since I got it. Also dual boots Windows 10 but I barely ever use it. I use another Windows 10 build through a VM that runs inside Mac OS for work.

I recently borked the Mac OS and it won't boot, I don't want to do the research to rebuilt it on Catalina. Figure it would be a good time to switch to Linux. I do have a few Linux machines at home but they're command line only so I'm not familiar with Linux desktops.

What's the best to use with the most options, most polished, best looking, etc? I'm basically going to use it for web surfing, watching videos, some photoshop and photo management. Any work related stuff will be done through a Windows VM because let's face it, Mac OS and Linux don't work on Windows domains. It also lets me keep work and personal stuff separate.

That's a tough question because with Linux distro fragmentation, what might be the most polished and best looking may also be the least supported with updates :p

I'm not a huge Linux guy, but between Ubuntu and Mint which I've used I'm quite partial to Mint's UI. I find Unity (Ubuntu's UI) very clunky and very resource-heavy. Based off of your requests, I think those two are your big options, and from there you can get various flavours to appease your experience visually.

I've decided to give Mint + Cinnamon a spin. so far so good. Just getting used to all the little nuances of Linux... like when I maded some changes to my network config by adding additional search domains so I can resolve my internal network... no matter what I tried, I couldn't resolve my local networks... then I remembered that I had to restart networking for the changes to take place. I knew I had to do that with my command line servers but I didn't think that would transfer to the desktop as well... lol