Do you mean touchpad or touchscreen?

In both cases they should work out of the box and depending on your distro/DE, your default touchpad settings may vary.

But that's why programs like touche and touchegg exist.

Checkout Box86/64 and Fex-Emu. They both do x86 translation/emulation on ARM Linux and the results are wayy better than any reasonable expectations I had going in.

Yeap, Linux Mint is an awesome distro for beginners and pros alike. It's rock solid stable and not too far from the look and feel of classic windows.

Given the vast differences in atmospheres (or the lack thereof) and their conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if those were the culprits