I am also a big fan of mint, have been using 3-4 years (and before that Debian > Ubuntu > Gentoo > red hat > slackware). Mint with cinnamon is also interesting.

I am also a big fan of mint, have been using 3-4 years (and before that Debian > Ubuntu > Gentoo > red hat > slackware). Mint with cinnamon is also interesting. I'm thinking of trying Ubuntu mate in a new build though, there's a new version out that's supposedly very usable (previous versions have been strongly beta apparently). Clearly, distros rise and fall.