if you wanna put Linux on a brand new Christmas gift laptop, I think 6.14 could definitely be too old
in some cases even 6.17 might be too old
If the Mint installer uses 6.8, can you even install it on brand new hardware? missing a laptop's wifi drivers would be a huge pain cause then you can't update it without a usb->ethernet adapter
that would be enough frustration for most users to turn back to Windows