A have never used mint and only used debian as a Workstation. If there is a permissions issue with an application, my first thought is how you installed you application?
When you say, you cant easily get tonthe content of a drive, what Desktop Environment do you us3 and what file explorer?
Switching Windows never works for me. When the audio does not work, I can always fix it by double toggeling the audio button/checkbox.
Why do you consider discord as spyware?
That is super cool. Can we might simulate it in a virtual environment? If so, would that be the first matrix like virtual world?
I killed my windows partition a week ago as well.
I feel like Windows tries with every change to push it’s users to Linux.
It seems that you are not aware in what format you installed your apps.
Before you install an app, be aware what format it is, that you are installing. Is it a debian package installed via the apt cli or via some store gui? Is it a snap package? Is it an appimage? Is it a flatpak? All of these are different and can have different issues (advantages/disadvantages). Often the same app is available in multiple formats.
This is a great video explaining what formats are out there: https://youtu.be/1lLZ-59xH3Y