I agree with everyone saying just to get a new dongle. It’s not worth the headache spending hours trying to get one to work when you can get one that’ll work much better for pretty cheap. When i got my current laptop i specifically got a model that has ubuntu support from the manufacturer even tho i don’t run ubuntu. Because all the hardware in it will atleast be decently linux compatible if they want to ship it with ubuntu sometimes.

Also Mint is typically pretty good about drivers so if its not working on Mint then yeah its gonna be a pain to fix is my guess.