yes some great tips from DarkArts. Often after switching it is also just trying to know which programs you should or can download. i've listed some options below to try and cover most scenarios:
here are some useful programs options - or windows equivalents:
"Task manager" -> Mission centre
File manager -> Thunar
MS office -> Libreoffice - if you have a working document with people using MS then you may want to download and install the Microsoft fonts (sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer) but you may not need to.
Web browsing -> Firefox, brave, librewolf etc
Video editing - davinici resolve / kdenlive
Wine and winetricks recommended to be installed if you are running windows programs. Alternatives such as
Lutris and
Bottles while mainly for gaming can also be used.
Video playback -> VLC, MPV
Music Playback - Rhythm Box is my preference (mostly due to network access)
VMs - Virtual Machine Manager
Email - thunderbird
Screen Recording -> GPU Screen Recorder
Gaming: Steam -> Lutris (or Heroic Launcher or Bottles - to launch other game launchers eg GoG, Epic, battlenet etc) - -> protonqt-up (updating proton/wine versions)
GPU overclocking -> LACT
MSI Afterburner -> mangohud/GOverlay
Timeshift -> if you want to back up system configuration (while you get used to linux its not a bad idea).
CPU-Z -> CPU-X
VPN - protonvpn
Streaming your PC over the LAN - Sunshine (host) & Moonlight (client)
E-book 'management' - > Calibre
Audio editing / mixing -> Audacity, Ardour, LMMS, Bitwig Studio
For astro related processing stuff, GIMP, PixInsight, Siril, GraXpert and waveSharp (kind of a Registax 6 successor for planet sharpening) are all natively run on linux.
Autostakkert 4, PIPP, winJupos etc all run easily through WINE (i've also had DSS, Registax6 - even Photoshop CS6 run but find they are kind of superseded by other programs now). I've heard that Affinity Photo is doable through WINE also as solid photoshop alternative if GIMP doesn't cut the mustard for you.
Image capture - for planetary work Firecapture has a linux version which works the same. for deep sky I haven't had the time to sort out Indi/Ekos/Kstars which is apparently the only real solution as far as I understand - apparently quite satisfactory (once setup). ZWO have suite of linux capture software if you have ZWO cameras but you'd also have to trust ZWO ...
other popular apps which you may or may not use include - spotify, discord, telegram, OBS studio.
one other thing that differs from windows is that if you have more than one hard drive in the system it may not automatically mount that drive. If you don't want to go into the terminal to make this happen I believe the disk management program 'gparted' allows you to do this in the GUI. something worth doing after setting up for sure. not sure if Mint comes with gparted - it could do but you can download if necessary.
I am pretty sure you can export your bookmarks to a file - save it and then import those settings on another browser - at a minimum i would assume at least Brave and Librewolf could import from Chrome.
good luck and enjoy the change remember to reach out for assistance if get stuck on something
