Fantastic news! Through excellent chat help from shmerl we've been able to solve the pickle, through some quite extreme means.

For some reason I had the wrong version of libpulse0. Installing the correct version, which was libpulse0:amd64=1:11.1-1ubuntu7.4 in my case, also removed a whole pack of cinnamon packages.

After downloading the 19.3 image to an USB stick I went ahead anyway, and it actually worked -- and it was possible to reinstall those packages.

After that, it then worked to eventually get Wine 5.0 installed.

Yet to restart the computer, but I think this actually worked, and I've been able to install Witcher 3's ModKit now, and uncook some files. Great stuff!! :)

(Edit: I handed out a pile of +'es. Thanks! )

Not surprised people do this; zorin linux was my gateway drug to linux that eventually just went to a ubuntu base layout.
Zorin catered specifically to the windows gui crowd, but aside from familiarity it was all linux under the hood; terminal abound.
I grew up on c64 and then dos, so terminal never really turned me away. In fact i kind of like straight code instead of the massive flash embedded websites we have today that take forever to load and obfuscate critical data because their one big advertising buildboard.

All you Mint users out there, be sure to apply security updates today, as there's a nasty bug in sudo when using in combination with a feature that's turned on by default in Mint (but not in most other distros). The effect is that any user can run things as root.

You are right on both counts: genius and worth a share. This is great for people making the transition from 7 and aren't too confident about it. Mint is I think is right for those people, but with this theme as well, that's near perfect (given nothing ever is).

Tsss that's 'cos they're looking at it the wrong way: cherry on top leading to taking the final leap switching to Linux, plus, unlike some company I can think of but will remain nameless, this is not forced onto Mint users ;-)

@Flyingfluffypiglet,

Yeah. I can see 'dad'/'mum'/'grand-parent' that is used to Windows (and 'good old windows' before the terrible Windows 8 GUI redesign) and not happy with Windows 10, having a real Linux based option here with that LM Cinnamon re-skin.

I dual-boot a WIndows 7/Linux Mint myself, so have no personal need for it, but for many people that are not super confident with change and new things, that Win7 as Linux Mint could be a great first step away from the clutches of MS, and in the 'Windows 10 as spyware' era i could see many more people willing to try it out for someone they know.

Agreed.

You are absolutely right that it is a great option/deciding factor bringing/winning users over to Mint and it is possible that it's one of -if not the the main- reason(s) behind the creation of that theme.

Same setup as yours, but I will say that though I really like Mint the way it is, I would find this theme tempting (covering my ears), for I've always liked the simple classic Win theme and stuck with it, especially since MS couldn't help themselves and bloated win7 with stuff like that resource hog aero for example, which I promptly got rid of. Like you no need for it but... (grin) want? Decisions decisions.....

Hmmm...

I have a spare 500gb SSD. Install Linux Mint and dual boot Mint + existing Ubuntu Mate?

I'm very tempted. Would like to remove the crutch of Ubuntu at some point. Based on this thread, I'm very tempted.

Then again, I'm lazy.

Both Ubuntu and Linux Mint are good distributions if you are lazy ;)
Hey, I’d say any Debian-based distribution is quite lazy-friendly.

That’s an advice I always have some difficulties to understand, but I keep seeing it here and there…
What would be the upsides for a daily use compared to a Debian Sid?

Less breakages. Sid overall simply breaks more often. That's why it's always called Sid after all :)

In my experience the frequency of breakages in Sid and testing is roughly similar (meaning there is very few of them), but maybe I’m lucky, or I tend to not use software that are prone to unexpected issues ;)

What’s not subjective on the other hand is that breakages in testing take much longer to get fixed than the same ones on Sid. There is a non-reducible delay for a package update (including bug fixes) to enter into testing from Sid, from memory it is something like 5~7 days.

---

Of course, what I write here is not true during a freeze.

Yes, that's the downside. But stuff does break in Sid more often (for instance KDE Plasma related uploads), and fixed before it enters testing, so the former balances out the later.

I do not use KDE (or any big desktop environment), that might be one of the reason of my bias in favour of Sid ;)

Also, Debian KDE team is understaffed, so potentially breakages in general are more expected.