Calmblue

Both. Although dried ones stay longer and are easier to crush by hand.

Asafoetida and curry leaves. Not exactly secret, but skipping these will make my food taste bland. Also chopping curry leaves will add more flavour.

At least you have a pi(e).

If you don’t have any issue with mint, don’t bother changing distros. Distro hopping is not necessary to enjoy linux.

“move on to something else” once I got comfortable with the OS.

I would suggest moving on to another distro if you’re not comfortable with Mint. The whole purpose of distro hopping is to find which distro is comfortable for you.