What is likely to be quicker/easier and the best decision in the long term ... Upgrading to 12.10 from 11.10 or moving to Linux Mint? This is for my work machi

What is likely to be quicker/easier and the best decision in the long term ... Upgrading to 12.10 from 11.10 or moving to Linux Mint? This is for my work machine which I run PHPStorm for web development, virtualbox for CS5 and Chrome and various other apps.