I'm curious why you use "Mint"?
I've been thinking around what GNU/Linux distribution should use instead of
GNU/Linux-libre because of firmware problem and I was found that "Fedora" is
the best choice. According to FSF:
https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html , Fedora "Unfortunately, the
decision to allow that firmware in the policy keeps Fedora from meeting the
free system distribution guidelines.".
Except these firmwares, Fedora is Free software distribution.
Debian was not so good enough for me because of Emacs's documents excluded in
the main repository. And if you included non-free repository for sake of
using non-free firmware, you will face an awkward situation that non-free
software is around you with ready to install. Anyway, if you want to use
Debian in minimal non-free firmware as need only, you might be do it manually
which was described in the Debian documentation/wiki and you can install
Emacs form source in order to get Emacs documentation.
For me, I've use non-free Laptop that was HPG32 with Fedora and Fully free
Lenovo Laptop X200 with Libreboot and Trisquel 8 alpha and happy with both.
