Just start with Linux mint and cinnamon or kde desktop environment. You should be good to go with that. Kernels are not something that you usually need to worry about, the default should work fine. If you need to, it’s easy to switch to another kernel by just installing it through the package manager.
I get the feeling, but in my experience it has more to do with the windows UI actual getting worse. When I use Linux, I’m happy to try out different desktop environments and shells, but they have one thing in common: they have designs that are created more thoughtfully.
It’s not just us growing old, it’s the world of technology growing shittier too!
Pod save America talked about this in a recent episode. There’s always a balance in the timing of these things. If you drip feed the endorsements, people might become used to it and not care. If many very famous people do their endorsements close to Election Day, it might motivate voters to actually go and vote. That’s one of the ways that those running the campaign might reason.