I've been using Linux Mint since I was forced off of Ubuntu by having no
interest in using Unity or Gnome3 for my desktop experience. For a
release or two on Ubunutu I was able to use "fallback mode" on the
desktop environment and it would give me Gnome2 but they eventually
pulled that out entirely so I tried a bunch of distros (including
Kubuntu) and settled on Mint with Mate to keep the same general
look/feel as gnome2 and since it is Ubuntu based I have the same tools
and packages generally available. So I've been trucking along for a
while and things generally just work. I am long past the time of wanting
to play around and tinker with every little thing so there is not much
excitement for me there anymore to explore a distro. So when things just
work, that is one of my major measures of success. When things don't
work and it takes very little time/effort to fix, that is also pretty
fantastic in my eyes. 

I just recently upgraded my workstation from Linux Mint 15 (MATE 64-bit)
to Linux Mint 17 (MATE 64-bit) so I can be on the LTS release. The
upgrade went pretty smooth, having multiple hard drives and partitions I
was able to maintain access to my previous Mint 15 install while keeping
/home identical across both. Turns out I did not need bother with that
as everything worked out well. I only really needed to re-install the
apps that I use, for which the main ones I keep a list on a wiki page as
well as notes and other useful hints to remind myself on certain /etc/
config file settings, iptables rules, etc. 

After running for a couple of weeks or maybe it's been a month I decided
to do a similar upgrade for my laptop but I did not intend to maintain
the original Mint 15 "/" partition and just overwrite it due to disk
space constraints. I also keep /home on a separate partition so I did
not have to worry about that data or the multitude of user-specific
settings. I can't believe how smooth the upgrade process was. Absolutely
no glitches or issues. When I booted up my desktop screen looked exactly
the same as before (thanks to /home being untouched); I just needed to
go through the same re-install apps process and re-work a few /etc
config files again. Now when I say "upgrade" I mean a fresh install in
both cases of my $dayjob workstation and my laptop. 

I don't know what else to say but for normal desktop power-user use, I
have basically nothing to complain about when it comes to Mint. Also a
few months back I decided to give back and setup a public Mint mirror at
$dayjob. So now I have even have local LAN access to packages, updates,
ISOs, etc for Mint (as well as Ubuntu and CentOS). 

In any case I give a +1 for Mint all the way. 

 
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