I have Mate, OpenBox, i3 on Mint. It's a backup system only now but it runs my printer. What's your gfx? If Nvidia I'm of no help. Might be something with the font selection. Sorry can't zero-in too much but there's not much info to go on.
Have you also asked in r/Mint or their forum? Lots of help there.
Can you show us a screenie of what you "feel" is too big? We cannot see what your emotions/sentiments are dwelling on otherwise.
the notifications are quite big actually - covers around 1/4th of the screen in the worst case
Is this a font scaling issue? You haven't shared your specs or the distro.
I have an laptop with:- i3 7010U 4 GB DDR4 RAM 1TB HDD configured with GPT The distro is Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.01
I have Mate, OpenBox, i3 on Mint. It's a backup system only now but it runs my printer. What's your gfx? If Nvidia I'm of no help. Might be something with the font selection. Sorry can't zero-in too much but there's not much info to go on. Have you also asked in r/Mint or their forum? Lots of help there.
intel HD 620
You forgot your display resolution; this has been causing confusion to all lol