

Most companies with specific dei reporting in my country started because of political pressure via us investors to begin with.
HR is a scam - if you’ve an issue go to your union rep instead, that’s why we have them. If you live in a country w/o them, get some.
Mint is a great starting point. I might also recommend having a look at KDE (the desktop environment) which will feel very familiar coming from windows and is available on quite a few distributions. I use it with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - less beginner friendly than Mint, but still an ok plafe to start.