I had Fedora and Arch on a 2012 Intel MacBook pro, it's running well, I think macos manages power consumption better, either way I believe if you have no dGPU you should be good to go, also you probably must check the Arch wiki Mac page (regardless of what disro you choose)
Found it, thx
Is that Apple-specific?
I've had a similar setup for quite some time, but you didn't mention what GPU you're running, also since you're running Mint, are you comfortable with Windows games (through wine/proton) and emulation?
How are you implementing shared data? Soft sym links between homes? Or like a separate folder with a group full access?
I see, but FAT32 is pretty limiting for file sizes no?