You’re definitely valid for being concerned about privacy, but I think much more of privacy is how you configure your system and less how it ships, especially when it’s all Linux under the hood anyways. Additionally, privacy features aren’t much good when they’re bundled, set to defaults, and never fully configured - it’s both a great learning opportunity and provides even better security to set up things like browser extensions, a firewall, tor, etc. yourself so you can know their ins and outs than simply having them installed by default and never touching them.
Of course the privacy difference between Windows and Linux is so night and day that that leap on its own might be everything you’re looking for and then some, but Linux is always what you make it, so you’re not giving up much when picking one or the other! The only big things you’re locking into is a community and a package manager/repository, and Mint is definitely top notch in those regards, so it’d be hard to do better.
just a random assortment grabbed from their top week:
yeah the american lawn is totally not a political topic
also yeah totally deriving joy from sabotaging megabillion dollar companies with collective action isn’t political
neither is trespassing as revenge for corporations eating up public areas
and what about a police force so sprawling and weaponized that we use it to reprimand children who make jokes?
sure, it may seem a little contrived to you, but when we talk about how a fish who has been in water all its life can’t actually see the water, that’s how we believe liberals are with their own politics - you believe there’s no politics there because you’ve only ever been immersed in your own politics for the entirety of your life.