I’m not sure there’s a good way to know without trying. I never even tried a short beard because it never looked right until I got past the “long enough to look good” threshold.
But that doesn’t mean never trimming a single hair, or anything extreme like that. I don’t like mine to grow out to the sides, so I’ve kept the sides trimmed.
I’m using Linux mint all day at work, while I have a couple of rarely-used Windows machines at home. I think the swap to Linux on those home machines is going to be a winter project this year.
It might be more accurate to say the project will be setting up the Linux version of a few key pieces of software. The actual installation of Linux Mint is the easiest part!