Ubuntu refugees like me. I not only don't like the new UI (and amazon shopping lens) but there's also hundreds of little things like gnome2 gedit having a usable search/replace dialog box as opposed to the gnome3 thingy-in -the-corner.

Also I like to be able to take a theme and modify components one by one like changing the colour of title bars or the font in menus without having to wade through 2k lines of CSS and non-existent documentation and then spend half an hour debugging why it's changed things all over the place. The v3 theming interface might as well let theme creators use obfuscation DRM to prevent users from modifying their themes.

I am at my home workstation - I don't much like ubuntu, am generally happy with debian or fedora, and have played with arch, gentoo, and others, but had heard good things about mint "just working" so thought to try it out.

It installed really smoothly, and was really quick and easy to set up for me, and my not-so-techy wife.

It installed the nvidia drivers when I asked it to without having to touch the commandline (there's a "drivers" or something like that tool in the system settings). I'd had some problems with them before on a pure debian install, so I was quite impressed.

In general, it was a pretty good experience. I'm thinking I may well switch over to fedora at home though. With my home machine I want something that just works, that I don't need to go faffing with config files any more. I have enough of that at work.

I am, although I use the Xfce version. Back in the day, before I learned to program, I used distributions like Arch, Slackware, Gentoo, etc. that generally required manual configuration and knowledge of the system and Linux in general. I realize this seems backwards, but these days I'd rather spend my time developing things than configuring my workstation. My interest in computers has moved from administration to creation, and using an operating system that takes care of the former allows me to better spend my time doing the latter.

That said, in light of Mint's issues I'm seriously considering moving back to Xubuntu or some other disto that has Xfce as a first class citizen. I'd be interested in suggestions.

I am. I've tried dozens of Linux distributions (sadly, this isn't an exaggeration) and Mint is likely the easiest and fastest one to set up and start being productive with.

When my daughter asked what Linux distro she should install on her laptop, I didn't hesitate in recommending Mint.

I am not one, but lot's of people. Most switched off from Ubuntu, landed a stayed there.

A lot of people according to http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity. I was surprised to see Mint take the first spot.

Me... I had been using Arch and FreeBSD for a time because I felt it was what serious programmers had to use. Then one day after FreeBSD refused to boot up again I figured I was bored of messing about in recovery mode yet again so I just thought I would give Mint ago. 20 minutes later everything was up and running. Since then I haven't been able to find the time or the will to spend a whole evening setting up my machine to change back.

The poor saps who have it recommended to them or installed for them.

It's a desktop environment theme at best, and could be packaged as such. Maintaining a distro for general consumption (it's pitched to new users as "Windows like"), is very hard work and carries a lot of responsibility.