Change Your Linux Desktop Environment: A How-To Guide for Beginners 

Very well explained, thanks!

Many good points I learned. Thank you

I have got Linux Mint 21.2 on this laptop from which I am watching this on. It's has the Kubuntu desktop which is KDE which I installed myself. I also have Linux Mint with Trinity desktop on the other laptop. Both laptops have those as the only desktop. I removed the original desktop which was Xfce because it's not good to have two desktops because they can conflict with one another. The only exception is if it is part of that desktop such as Openbox which is a component of the LXDE desktop so cannot be removed. Both Cinnamon and Gnome desktops use Gnome Flashback as their fallback mode. Gnome also uses Gnome Classic if you have installed Gnome Shell Extensions. Otherwise it is safe to remove the default desktop. It is in Debian and Linux Mint anyway because you are only changing the desktop. You are not removing the Mint or Debian components. There are several posts on the Mint forums about this in which they advise it's better to start with Xfce if you are going to replace it with a different desktop environment because it is easy to remove and does not have many system dependencies. But you can remove any desktop and replace it with another so long as you log into your new desktop you have installed first before removing the old one. I have also run the Ubuntu Unity desktop and also Gnome on Mint. I also have Debian which gives you a choice of what desktop you want during the install. And there is quite a lot of desktops to choose and you can choose to have the minimal desktop which is just Gnome with the essential software or a full install of Gnome with everything. You can also do this with most desktop environments you choose to install.