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).
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)
that’s what they’re working towards… removing the extra prime benefits.
but you’ll pay more just for that by the time they’re finished.
it’s a dead market. once the current crop of retirees die off, there won’t be anymore because the rest of us will have to work til we die.
why stop there? what about the others?
i believe that’s one of the reasons why they (‘doge’, et al) was raiding all the government systems and stealing all the data… to build such a thing for the chief grifter/wanna be dick-tator and his masters.
gotta inflate those ipo so everybody (that they choose) ‘wins’.