It's difficult to review Mint: you just start up the live DVD, click on the install button, and 20 minutes later you have a Linux installation that does everything you need!

The main programs LibreOffice, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Xchat, Banshee, and Gnome-Mplayer were all stable. All media codecs were installed, and files played well. My "mp4 from hell" was a bit choppy, but most distros can't play it at all. Mint had no problems with my admittedly simple hardware. Very wisely, they have stuck with Gnome 2 and avoided the chaos that is troubling users of version 3. The software manager is particularly nice, with its user ratings and screen shots.

This is a bulky distro: running Firefox and LibreOffice took over 700GB including buffers and caches. Smaller computers should use the LXDE version. Also, if your computer can only use CDs, get the version without media codecs and install them later.

Rather strangely, as well as Gnome-Mplayer you get Totem and VLC. Equally strangely, they were the only things that weren't working properly.

Final quote from the installer: "for best results, please ensure the computer is plugged in".

Excellent distro for a newby like me, guess a lot more windows users would use this if they were aware how good and quick it is.

I was concerned when installing as due to disk errors from the burned image. I tried another host and it worked great. I have my wife trying the system now so we may begin the journey together.

Starting last night we started a 30 day test to use only Linux but so far so good. My wife is tickled that there is so much available in software and help on line is getting friendlier all the time. We are navigating the the man pages and learning.

So far no major glitch and the computer seems faster and more responsive. I will repost in 30 days!!!!

It works - has two things going for it - (1) it allows me to experiment (2) I can do my normal work without problems. it's won me.

It builds on Ubuntu and delivers a great OS. Now if my bank would support Linux and if I could a couple of compatible apps I would no longer be using MS

Overall it was easy to install and use. The availability of so much software is staggering. Just wish I was smart enough to make the most use of the operating system and software. Educating self is a major objective. Strongly recommend.

I always end up coming back to Mint. I've tried over 50 distros and found this one to be the easiest to set up and get rolling. With Ubuntu using Unity now, which I've tried and hated, I am a full-time Mint user now. I'm not a fan of gnome 3 but I'll be switching to Mint 12 or later sometime down the road when updates are no longer sent out for Mint 11 which I currently use.

Everything other than getting my HP laser printer up and running works great and is easy as pie to set up. But I'm not new to linux in general, I've been using it pretty much straight since 2002. I'm glad I found Mint. Mint is my #1 distro now. Arch being #2 even though it's much more difficult to set up initially but that is offset by them having such a superb wiki. Hats off to Mint and it's team! Great distro.