I have in fact used Linux before. I've used Ubuntu & Fedora previously, and it was some of the the worst mistakes I ever made. I was fine with Ubuntu, except for odd bugs completely locking up my computer, but I never stayed with it and went back to Windows because Ubuntu felt like it was very fragile. I have tried Fedora and within 30 minutes I had completely killed it and had it have a kernal panic on boot (new record?) from following how to install nvidia drivers in an documentation tutorial.
When Ubuntu 10.04 came out it felt like it was getting there other then 1/3 of the times plymouth would fail to get administrative powers to shut down the computer or something like that. So it wouldn't shut down or restart, only logout. Causing me to hold the power button for 4 seconds to shut it down many times (In fear of the safety of my computer I didn't stick with it). There were also a few other stupid bugs that should of been fixed. Speaking of which that stupid bug in launch pad for plymouth still hasn't been fixed and it's apposed to be a LTS version?!
I stayed with Windows for quite a while until Linux Mint peaked my interest, and since I was gettying annoyed with Windows Vista being slower then molasses with GIMP and other things it started become unusable for productive purposes. Especially since the new school year was starting soon, and I'm doing volunteer work on making the school's website not be just a beige background and black text anymore, so I needed to have access to my laptop and have it quickly booted up and running. (Which Vista fails at. It almost made me late for a class waiting for it to shutdown so I could pack up my laptop). So I decided I should try it and I went to the Linux Mint website press download and burned it. Ploped it in and installed and... lo and behold I try Linux Mint, and supringly it's perfect out of the box. It found what graphic driver I needed and asked me to install it. Wi-fi worked, sound worked (even headphones), even the wi-fi button that flashes during internet usage worked, etc.. I found it to be extremely stable and polished. (Plus the best part is, it shuts down right every time). Even my laptop is really quiet, instead of being the usual jet engine O_o
So, hello everyone and thank you to the Linux Mint community for making such an awesome distro.
