Day 4. Noticed that if I am in either a viewport or blueprint window, if I hold down the right mouse button, occasionally moving the mouse causes the view to zoom in and out. Still investigating to see what causes this.
Successfully completed another tutorial in which the player character lost “health points” by walking into a “Damage Box” and gained health by walking into a “Health Box.” Since I didn’t have access to magical FX particle systems referred to in the video I replaced them with sparks for the damage box and smoke for the health box.
Finally and most importantly fellow Linux Mint users, I was able to install Epic Games Launcher by installing Lutris! Check your software installer on your Linux version for it and install it. It simply works! Now I have access to all of the free assets I selected.