Pika

Yay! I'm a microbiologist, but am connected to food technology, so there's that :D

Living cells for the win!

There could be many reasons to be opposed to it, not necessarily racist ones.

You can support the rule of law - that's not racist. You may want to support legal immigration, while closing illegal ways that commonly lead to abuse of migrants - this is straight up progressive. You may consider illegal immigrants more dangerous as they didn't go through screening procedures - that's up for debate, but not necessarily racist, etc. And generally, if you consider that same rules should apply to everyone, this is not racist.

However, it's worth considering the laws of your area and the way they can affect legal migration. Going against illegal immigration and at the same time voting to complicate legal one, especially in relation to certain nationals, likely signals of racism (or, rather, ultranationalism). It is one thing to want to make the process transparent and legal and the other - to build more barriers.

I see fellow biologist right there

Oryza sativa gang, rise up!

Fair! Especially as a server software

I appreciate Debian being the community distro, but other than that, how's it much better?

Arch broke for me quite fast any time I tried to run it. I have no idea how to manage Arch properly without being a red-eyed nerd constantly checking forums for broken updates and other notes.

Nah, OpenSUSE/Fedora require very little maintenance too - the only thing separating them from Mint is more knowledge required to set them up the right way. Terminal has more use there.

So, I'd expect you to confidently operate either at home without much work. You have competence, and neither requires your constant attention.

Tumbleweed might be a bit of a hard start, since it assumes you already know a bunch of nuances. But I'm happy that you were ready to learn and grasped it from the get-go!

Hope you'll have your software figured out

Which is exactly what OpenSUSE/Fedora have to offer. It just works and doesn't get in the way. The only real difference between them and Mint in terms of user experience is that they require some more proficiency with the terminal and experience with Linux overall and do not assume user to be a complete newbie.

So, you're on the right track with Mint. It holds to nearly the same philosophy, and offers you the tools you may find useful as a less proficient user. Keep it up!

As someone who ran Manjaro as my first Linux for 1,5 years, it's a breeze to set up and everything just works...until it doesn't.

What screws it is that eventually, over time, something goes wrong. Something breaks here and there, new bugs appear, and without Arch proficiency that is not really expected of a Manjaro user, it's next to impossible to track it down. So, eventually one has to reinstall.

I've been a strong Manjaro proponent back in the day, but now I see its flaws, unfortunately. I wish it could be a great option, though.

Except Fedora is actually fine as an option. Though I had my share of troubles setting it up, and their decision to ditch X11 forced my hand to OpenSUSE when I went for it the second time. Had no regrets so far.

Manjaro is a tempting option when you want Arch without being competent enough to confidently operate Arch.

Been there before. Had it for over a year for the first time, but quickly noped out on the second try.