Thank all y'all (care to guess which part of the USA I am from?) for the suggestions. I am finally going to give one more try to LMDE 3 (Cindy) which only comes as a Cinnamon version with no immediate plans for a Mate one. If this doesn't work, I've had wonderful experiences with the Linux Mint Forum and really hate to leave since they have put up with me for 10+ years at least.But if necessary will switch. I'll try Manjaro,PCLinuxOS, and possibly look at Arch again. I am almost 78 and suspect that if I make it 5 years, I probably won't have the residual brain power to upgrade from Linux Mint 19 Mate.

Thanks again,
tlcmd

i do NOT recommend manjaro.
here's the reason:
http://allanmcrae.com/2013/01/manjar...for-stability/
and this basically hasn't changed during the last 5 years (i.e. they're still doing iut in the same way).
shortly: manjaro is to arch what ubuntu is to debian (sorry if i'm pushing someone's buttons here).

i hear that other arch distros do not tweak arch's sources at all, and are equally easy to install.
i hear good things about antergos.

2 members found this post helpful.

I finally decided to try and successfully (so far) to install LMDE3 with a /, home/ and data partition. The data partition was formatted as NTSF while / and home were ext4.

Thanks all for the advice and suggestions. I may be back for more into if my LMDE3 lets me down.

tlcmd

Arch or openSUSE Tumbleweed. When I've played with them in the past Tumbleweed does seem more stable then Arch. I am sure Arch users will flame the heck out of that, but it is/was what it is.

Arch is lighter (that should make them happy).

You nailed it regarding Manjaro.

Antergos I believe installs stock arch plus an extra repo for Antergos fonts.

There used to be something called Architect which was a great Arch text installer, drop dead simple it was. Sadly the dev. left it.

^ well in a way archbang is also just an arch installer, and i guess there are a few more around. some probably like calling themselves a distro.

afauiu, archbang uses openrc as init system mowadays.

actually, it does call itself a distro now, but back when i tried it it didn't.

Arch is not "easy".

Try Void.

I'd avoid anything which uses SystemD as the plague.

Best option: Void Linux. While it doesn't hold your hand, it's a good learning experience.

If you're ok with SystemD borking your system once in a while, then I recommend Solus Linux. The rest of the SystemD end-user desktop distributions are just lower quality compared to this one (this comes from a person who has seen a lot of distributions).

Arch is dead easy if you follow the install guide: theirs, not anyone else's. Yes, there is no installer but it's a decent learning experience. Void is an excellent choice and if I were running Linux, that is what I would run. Good init system, great package manager. Small choice of packages but they do have a build system and you can make your own package out of something they do not have in the official repos. The installer has a weird glitch in that the onscreen message when you go to format drives at install time, tells you all drives you chose for the install will be formatted, regardless of whether you chose to or not. For those of us who pay attention to messages, this is a little disconcerting. There is a way in the installer to view the actions you chose during the install process and the drive listing shows a flag for those drives that will be formatted.

Solus's installer did not work for multiple hard drives, or maybe my hardware configuration was too much for it. I have multiple SSDs, each for different mounts. At the time I tried to install Solus, it refused to recognize more than one at a time so I would have had to choose a single drive to install, then tweak the configuration in /etc/fstab to mount the other SSDs. I found this to be a deal breaker and did not install. Just my experience, I am sure the distro is fine for folks without an overly complicated workstation...

For rolling, I second Manjaro, it's about as easy as they get.

PCLinuxOS forums also have lots of experienced users who don't mind helping others. In fact, I think they enjoy it, maybe a little too much. There is also a Facebook fan club:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/2210485167/

and it may be one of the few distro's with a monthly magazine.

https://m.facebook.com/The-PCLinuxOS...2516664529821/

i really have to take a closer look at pclinuxos one of these days.
could be the perfect low-maintanance distro for a laptop that isn't mine?

I was impressed with Manjaro. Looks good and works good. It is systemd fwiw.

Another vote for Manjaro. They have a MATE edition in the Community releases.