That was actually my experience. My Win 7 laptop died, I needed a new computer, bought one that came with Windows 8.1, and everything was different for no reason, down to whether you left click or right click on the system tray icons to get menus or control panel windows to appear. Switching from Windows 7 to Linux Mint felt like less of a jump, and the changes between versions of MInt aren’t that drastic; they don’t reshuffle the UI on a whim.