As Nobara is Fedora based and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian, perhaps stay in this eco system and use some Fedora spin/derivate on the Laptop as well.
Personally, I use KDE on Debian and it works great on my 2011 Laptop.
I just think, especially for a beginner, remembering the ‘under the hood’ commands, e.g. package managers, different preconfigurations of installed packages e.t.c., for such different distributions is probably quite challenging.
As Nobara is Fedora based and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian, perhaps stay in this eco system and use some Fedora spin/derivate on the Laptop as well.
Good luck with the transition away from Windows!
Run Fedora KDE on my 2016 MacBook Pro, runs amazingly.
Personally, I use KDE on Debian and it works great on my 2011 Laptop.
I just think, especially for a beginner, remembering the ‘under the hood’ commands, e.g. package managers, different preconfigurations of installed packages e.t.c., for such different distributions is probably quite challenging.