i just switched back to debian for personal desktops after years of mint (and a few others). i’m using intel cards right now… drivers are a total non-issue… so that helps some, not having to deal with nvidia drivers. games are running great on stable kernel and drivers (heroic flatpak for launcher and wine).
you can have your ‘start button’ in the bottom left if you want, and still have the panel going up the left edge instead of along the bottom.
the panel on the side. it just makes sense–if you can get ‘used to’ it.
screens are wider than they are tall, but most content viewed by or worked on by most people goes vertical: web sites and text documents. hell, even most pictures and video people take these days, too, because they still don’t know enough to rotate their damn phones.
i almost went cinnamon when i set up my trixie here last month, but went plasma because of some kwin addons. i did install its nemo, though, for when i need a file manager that doesn’t choke on thumbnails (like dolphin does) when an extension doesn’t match what the file actually is (like a lot of images served by web sites and saved by a browser these days)
my boss just emails stuff to herself… or just lets it sit in drafts (imap) with the attachment.
i use localsend, wormhole, or similar usually, especially if one or both the devices aren’t “mine”… and if it’s stuff i’m ‘sending’ to a handheld from a pc, i might instead drop them somewhere on one of our dietpi boxes and just use http
the only guy i have doing dictation into a pc (and not into a special system like for medical records) regularly uses dragon on windows using a somewhat expensive microphone, a setup he’s had for probably 30 years. he has one of those old-timey radio host voices, that might help some… but i rarely ever see him having to edit what dragon spits out
you can add it, and switch at login. there’s a cinnamon spin of ubuntu, so packages are in the repos. you’ll also find meta packages assembled by both ubuntu and debian that will install what their respective ‘full desktop experience’ has (browser, libreoffice, utilities, and what-not).