For certain computers, Mint does prefer you hook up once with a wire, and THEN go to driver manager to check for your ‘wireless’ driver update - once done you can abandon the wire (although ALWAYS faster and more secure) if you wish’
Glad you got thru 
@QuriousPatriot I found the wireless driver. It threw me because it said (airport extreme) but once installed, it connected my router. I was able to do updates, install multimedia codec, and Brave. Now learning how to customize. Do you know how to add apps to the bottom panel?
Those are called APPLETS - Right clic on an empty space in the bar and go to APPLETS (with the jigsaw puzzle icon) once that is open - at the top you will see MANAGE/DOWNLOAD
Once downloaded go back to MANAGE TAB and on the left clic it (see a checkmark) to activate newly added applet
Hello everyone! I came out of the cave to take a break and see if I can help anyone.
There are some Macs that are stubborn when it comes to booting from a USB - or even a DVD for that matter. If you are looking to completely replace macOS, the solution is simple. Install rEFInd via the following link:
https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html
Go further down where it points out the installation under macOS. Once that is done, your USB will boot normally.
On the other hand, if you are looking to dual-boot, then the process will be different - which you can see in the article below:
Those are for the extreme cases when the Mac refuses to see or properly boot the USB.
Also, when you first install a Linux distro, as you guys said above, it’s always prudent to use an Ethernet cable. I’ve been doing that to my MacBook (and my HP laptop) when I move around distros to test things out. I’m now writing from an Arch MacBook Air - where I initially thought of testing out the CuteFish desktop environment, only to discover that’s in quite the early beta and it was messing up the policy kit service on the KDE. To make things short, this issue would stop the password pop-up window and would produce authentication errors.
In any scenario, each Mac may have its own idiosyncrasies when it comes to booting. However, once you go through that step, the rest is straightforward. 
@QuriousPatriot was crazy busy the past week. Quick update on the Applets. I had to download mate-dock-applet to be able to customize the bottom panel. Now it works. I will call this question solved, since I strayed from the original question. Thank you for your help.
