Mint is, in my opinion, too easy, and doesn't convey the joy of Unix as much as a standard (direct) distribution of Linux, and being the third child in a distribution tree just adds a bunch of unused features, if you're new to Linux, just use good 'ol Ubuntu LTS instead of a fork of Ubuntu. Else if you're experienced with the Unix ecosystem, then just install gentoo, be warned though, configuring a Gentoo installation takes at around 1 day.
^{Also, systemd is shitty bloat}