First off, scrap that CD tutorial, nobody uses optical discs anymore lol. All you actually need is a cheap 8GB USB flash drive and a free tool like Rufus or Ventoy to flash the official ISO onto the thumb drive. Those guides mentioning external drives are usually just suggesting a place to back up your personal files before wiping or partitioning your main drive.
As for the Play Store stuff, that is why it feels weird. Apps on there (like UserLAnd, Termux, or Andronix) don't actually install an OS on your machine. They just spin up a Debian container/emulator on top of Android. It isn't running natively on your hardware lol so you won't get the real desktop environment or performance that way.
Linux Mint is super solid, but if gaming is a priority i'd say Pop!_OS is honestly the way to go by far. It is what I run on my setup. It comes with Nvidia graphics drivers pre-installed right out of the box and handles gaming hardware way smoother without needing to fiddle around in the terminal as much.
Either way, if you want to try the real deal without breaking anything on your system:
Grab a blank USB drive (8GB or bigger).
Download the ISO directly from the official website (Linux Mint Cinnamon or Pop!_OS).
Use Rufus to flash the ISO onto the USB.
Plug it in, reboot your PC, and hit your boot menu key (usually F12, F11, or Del) to boot from the USB.
The best part is that both will boot into a "Live Session" right off the USB stick. You can click around, test your Wi-Fi, and play with the desktop environment without actually changing anything on your computer until you hit the install icon 😎
