Nice

I’ve found a possible solution on superuser.com. It’s basically copying the credentials from Linux to Windows.

Starting in July, Debian will not provide further security updates for Debian 10. A subset of buster packages will be supported by external parties. Detailed information can be found at Extended LTS.

The project is managed by Freexian. Their customers decide the scope of supported packages but updates and security fixes will be available for all Debian users without cost.

So basically, as veryoldoldstable it will be kept alive for another five years.

along with Debian

Debian uses separate repos, which are incompatible to Ubuntu.

Snap and Flatpak are both available as packages. I don’t know about the availability of snap or Flatpak packages in the graphical ‘appstores’ in Ubuntu or Mint, but in Plasma Discover both are available by plugins.

That’s always a good idea

Yes, that works. Just install some KDE plasma desktop metapackage of your choice and, if you like, you can remove cinnamon and related GTK packages afterwards by removing libgtk.

I mean the deb-repositories which are of concern for apt. Mint is basically Ubuntu plus an additional repository and thus binary compatible.

Or if OP wants to stay in the Debian/Ubuntu based branch: KDE Neon, Debian with KDE (+ LMDE repo), or Kubuntu 22.04 + Mint repos.

AfaIk, Ubuntu uses some snap packages, e.g. Firefox, not the whole DE.

Why should the experience be essentially different from Kubuntu 22.04, as it uses essentially the exactly same repos?

Windows -> Ubuntu 10.04 … 11.10, -> Kubuntu 12.04 -> Debian 7 (stable)… 8 (testing… stable) … 12

Yes, usual releases are supported ~ 3 months, LTS versions get support for a much longer period e.g. 6.6 for 3 y, 6.1 for 4 y, 5.15 for 5 y or 5.10 for 6 y.

Two different things. LTS kernels get security patches until their support is dropped.

Yes, but if e.g. openSuSE installs its Grub 2 on top of Ubuntu’s Grub 2, you end up with a different theming. If Windows overwrites the bootloader, the Linux boot options are gone.

No, but somebody else has done it and it is basically like the standard procedure for switching between releases.

It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.

3. There’s a Dropbox .deb and .rpm for linux as far as I can tell, but I cannot attest to its quality or how well it integrates with a given file manager. Cloud accounts are generally well supported amongst the key desktop environments, for which I’d consider Cinnamon to be a part of.

In 2018 Dropbox dropped support for running/syncing on encrypted partitions, in my case ext4 on encfs. Don’t ask me why.

I don’t know if that’s still the case.

More elegant than running an entire Linux system in a vm.

If you are using Xubuntu 22.04, it should be possible to switch without reinstallation, as Linux Mint and Ubuntu are binary compatible as Mint uses Ubuntu’s repos and only adds Mint-specific packages in its own repo.

As there are LTS branches, currently 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, 6.1 and 6.6 which will get updates until Decembre 2025/2026, I don’t see the problem.