" We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe." — von Goethe

FLAC is good, but not necessary for background listening. At 192k the average song is ~ 5Mb. 100k x 5 = 0.5 TB.

With a long, varied list of select internet radio stations, you can choose what genre (or special weekly show) you want to listen to at the moment. Picked by people, not algorithms. Keep a playlist of the stations you like best, startup your player (like VLC) with the list, and pick the one you’re in the mood for.

Or you could just collect mp3s locally for choosier days, dump a bunch of them into VLC, listen to them in album or random order. In either case, at no cost.

I think the last time I installed Mint (21.2) it DID create a swapfile. Don’t use it, so commented that out in /ETC/FSTAB.

When I started with Linux, I was happy to learn that I didn’t need a bunch of separate partitions, and have installed all-in-one (except for boot of course!) since. Whatever works fine for you (-and- is easiest) is the right way! (What you’re doing was once common practice, and serves just as well. No disadvantage in staying with the familiar.)

After I got up to 8GB memory, stopped using swap … easier on the hard drive -and- the SSD. (I move most data to the HD … including TimeShift … except what I use regularly.)

I use Mint as well; for me this keeps things as simple as possible. When I install a new OS version (always with the same XFCE DE) I do put THAT on a new partition (rather than try the upgrade route and risk damaging my daily driver) using the same UserName. A new Home is created within the install partition (does nothing but hold the User folder.)

To keep from having to reconfig -almost everthing- in the new OS all over again I evolved a system. First I verify that the new install boots properly, I then use a Live USB to copy the old User .config file (and the apps and their support folders I keep in user) to the new User folder. Saves hours of reconfiguring most things. The new up-to-date OS mostly resembles and works like the old one … without the upgrade risks.