Installing and using Linux Mint Cinnamon Edge is a lot of fun, running in a QEMU VM on a modern SSD, loads very fast and the Cinnamon desktop is very fast and smooth in operation. After installation, boot into the new desktop and open a Terminal. Then install all pending updates.
Linux Mint features the Timeshift utility to provide a system backup to a remote NAS, this would be a great way to have secure backups of your Linux Mint files. Also, a very useful shortcut to install multimedia codecs for playing MP3 music and MKV movie files.
There is also a backup tool to create a backup file of all files in your home directory. Another very useful addition to Linux Mint.