My personal opinion: Linux Mint with XFCE is amazing. It is what Ubuntu “supposed to be” before starting to shove snaps and other madness in our throats. I was skeptical about XFCE because somehow I got memories of many years ago when it was very very basic, but now… It looks great! It has everything a typical user needs, very polished, low resources. Not going back to Gnome or KDE.
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Firefox is not being explicitly started, this is something else that is trying to launch a URL and presumably FF is the default browser. ISTR something similar but specifically it was launching MS Edge when it was not the default browser. I think I found an answer eventually, needed something changing in the registry.
But by far the easiest solution to start-up issue sis to simply use hibernate or sleep mode (as appropriate) all the time. Mine never gets fully powered off except when it forces me to do an update.
cute. Firefox never opened at start, only after the update.
Interesting enough this morning this undesired reach-out did not happen. I also restarted it a few times already for other reasons and it did not occure again.
The Array-Error message was about MSEdgeredirect, no surprise a windows update would mess with it 
I took the radical solution this morning and deinstalled it. I’ll see if Edge will bud in again or not on certain links. Anyway, this had nothing to do with the above problem of firefox opening and reaching out to some funny address as I deinstalled MSEdgeredirect way after.
So now that the Win-11 laptop seems to run properly again, time to turn to the keyboardproblem on my PC running Kubuntu …
I am still using windows 10 emulator at office computer. Easy to expand a taskbar as you put in this screenshot, actually never realized before seeing your post that win11 does not allow it? Wtf?
Emulator with taskbar tweaker is what works for me (most importantly that i can have multiple tabs from different tasks not grouped (i.e a tab from chrome then two tabs word, then an excel tab, then chrome again, then word again). So important when you are multitasking, but no microsoft never thought of this…
Err, yes, it does. Phil’s got some problems, that’s not how it normally behaves.
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Actually win11 no longer allows multi-row taskbar.
Yes, I realised afterwards that that’s what was meant, mea culpa. Not that I ever used it anyway. I just tend to have at least ten tabs open in Firefox all the time, not separated out on the toolbar.
Each browser task on there is a separate window. Within each window, there are probably around 30 tabs each.
Understood, and was totally surprised to learn this. As I said, a solution that works for me is to use Win 10 emulator. Everything like good old 10, but with 11 as an engine (at work only; home computer is still and will remain at 10).
It’s working how I want. On the screenshot the tabs are not separated out. There are about 240 open tabs, split between 6 windows. If I had each tab on the taskbar directly, it would be too confusing and take up too much space.
Microsoft support for Windows 10 ends in Oktober 2025.
Then in November I will be switching to Linux.
the fact that I couldn’t move the windows taskbar to the side of the screen (vertical orientation) was a first grief, but I started getting used to auto-hidden taskbar as on 16:9 display I can’t afford loosing 1cm of screen height. Then the nail in the coffin was adding more and more “dumb” AI features. The OS is just a task switcher, period. I am strongly against any other functionality creeping inside. M$ could actually invest some hours to improve the troubleshooting gadgets to actually tell you why networking is not working, or something else stopped working…but no they prefer to spy on you recording your screen every second 
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So, I didn’t get much support here about what Linux to choose. Instead I learnt that people like to fill up half their screen with toolbars and on top of that strange idea use limited amount of icons so they - imo - end up searching for ever for the desired window. 
However, I installed Kubuntu which was brought to me by @sichuan. Lovely, felt comfi with it immediately. It installed on my old C-partition and all the data was still there. When I looked at the partitions I saw that tiny bit that claimed to be Windows and I can be very tedious when it comes to things not being the way I want. In this case, not a trace of windows left.
Then @italo recommended Mint, which I had originally asked about and I thought I might as well check it out. This time I redid the partitioning first = windows totally gone (but my data obviously too, which was no problem). Mint is rather simple (specially compared to Kubuntu just before) but all one needs is there it seemed and a little research showed that for my old PC (very old but it has a SSD. Only 4GB RAM though) which windows 11 refused last time already (but with a work around I installed it anyway) and will block completly next time it seemed to be the right choice.
Basically I must say that Linux is definitely a lot (a lot) more likable than it was 10 years ago when I had a look at it last.
Then the fun started. Stuck in initramsf. Great, wth is that? One thing was clear: It was stuck. Sorted that out (don’t ask me how, days after I did).
Then I couldn’t get my data from the external HD into the computer. I mean, seriously?!? Well, of course in the end I could (one TomTom folder refused so I dropped it. Who needs old TomTom data anyway, it’s all on the web, all I have to do is connect the device). Talking about old data; what a chance to sort out one’s old D-drive. Files from 2008, no kidding …
There was this, that and the other problem to solve and while the internet is full of help, many of these helpers tend to leave out an info or two = the advice is kind of useless. So what needs to be done is wading through the informations, take a bit from here and the missing bit from there to finally get things done. No problem, at least they tried.
Next I had to install a program from the internet (as I needed the Linux version of it). The regular ways just seemed too much hassle so I went for snap. Yep, I know, Linux professionals don’t like snap but hey, I’m years from being a Linux professional so sod off 
. Worked like a charm but then I couldn’t get it into the Applications for easy access!! By then I was knackered and just went to bed.
In the morning the miracle: The program was not only accessable via Applications but it was in the office-department (where, being a book-keeping program, it belongs).
Linux and Windows have in common: Reboot is a magic action!
It was like in the old days, endless hours on the computer, endless nights and a complete mess up of sleep/wake hours (great fun 
).
The most difficult thing is the thinking. It’s like keeping Italian out of Spanish when talking - almost impossible. The “this windows procedure, how do I solve it in Linux” and “what does this Linux advice mean in Windows?” I’m sure it does wonders to my synapses, they must be firing like mad.
Long story short: I like Linux, it has improved so much. It’s also more interesting to handle than today’s windows versions and as it’s new it challenges me without being overwhelming. There is no way back to Windows on my PC while I keep win-11 on the laptop until I’m completely sure about what I’m doing. Then I might install Kubuntu there.
And who knows, maybe soon I get to the girlie-bits like changing the back-ground-picture and colours etc. 
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what a happy ending 
PS. Linux professionals love snap and/or appimage, that’s why it was invented, just drop the damn package and run it
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well, it is disabled in Mint.
But yep, I fully agree.
@sichuan and @italo what do you do for security on your Linux computers?
I read there is nothing one must do apart from keeping track of updates as most attacks are aimed at Windows and Apple.
That sounds a bit dewy-eyed to me (plus they did say “most” )
Another six 2021 laptops unable to run Win11 fed to the hungry shredder since Wednesday