

The only reason to change would be if you want a different desktop environment. You could do that with mint or go with a distro that mains a different DE.
And if they picked the Cinnamon DE version, they can still install KDE or GNOME or whatever. There’s no reason to reinstall the whole OS just to get a different DE.
OpenSuSE Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed rocks, and it’s what I use. However, I don’t recommend it for new users because there just isn’t as much support out there, whereas Mint has tons of users and thus tons of support.
Now you’re talking affordable!