I've recently made my way back to being a Linux Mint user and I plan to stick around for the foreseeable future and as such I wanted to reintroduce myself.
I had been previously using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as my operating system of choice but began to have problems with aging packages so after some serious considerations regarding my options and their pros and cons I decided to move back to Linux Mint and its regular six month releases.
This choice was due primarily to the extra layer of testing Linux Mint provides from its neat update manager as well as the fact that Ubuntu is upstream (so Linux Mint gets more testing total than Ubuntu as well as provides more time for upstream to work out any remaining launch bugs).
Linux Mint 8 was actually the first GNU/Linux distribution that became less work than Windows for me in the HTPC and general usage realm so I'm quite happy to be back at it. I no longer distro hop and this change wasn't taken lightly, but I've been running it on multiple systems for about a month now and it's been a positive change. Two problems I was having previously were relieved and I appreciate Linux Mint's more moderate changes between LTS releases.
I love Ubuntu and the progress it's brought about for all GNU/Linux users and the marketing it's done, but the changes they push out between LTS releases are too much hassle for me want to deal with on a regular basis!
Anyway, I wont bore you all with my ramblings any longer. However, if anyone is interested more in my thought processes about switching back to Linux Mint from Ubuntu LTS I wrote about it here: http://www.spacemonkeynet.org/index.php/topic,96.0.html
Cheers!
