Mint is full fat Linux. Just one of the most polished and stable. Just because you aren't running gentoo or arch doesn't mean you aren't running Linux. 😉
I've run Linux since the mid 90s. Honestly the most I tend to use the terminal for is updating or rsync. With KDE especially you can configure most things inside it and do basic user management as well. It's come a long way from it's CDEish 1.0 days. And a lot of the other DE are fairly similar.