Good choice with Mint, I think its the best distro for people transitioning from Windows.

Yeah that’s the one I was thinking about, thanks!

A bare keyboard attached to a screen, that I could plug my phone (possibly running Phosh) and use it as a hardware for a laptop experience

Back in the day there was a phone called motorola atrix 4g, they made a lapdock for it that let you do this. There was also 3d party company that made lapdocks for modern Samsung phones that support Dex, but I’m not sure if they’re still aournd.

You might like this concept phone I saw the other day https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/24/23930668/lenovo-moto-flexible-wrist-phone-concept

I’ve been using Moshidon, it’s based on the official app so it has the same UI, but it has a lot of extra features (following hashtags, viewing federated timeline, viewing timelines from other instances are the main ones I use that were missing from the official app).