My current Ubuntu setup evolved from Linux Mint.  Having done the Warty, Hoary, Breezy line I decided to give Mint a go, but I soon got sick of their windows-esque Gnome menu setup and reverted to the default setup... several dist-upgrades later the only thing really left of Linux Mint is the splash screen and, if I could be bothered, that'd probably be gone by now... If I ever re-install this laptop I think I'd rather go for the standard Ubuntu of the time and then install the codecs etc. manually - these "hacked" distros are all very well, but "under the bonnet" they're basically Ubuntu anyway so I learnt my lesson... if there's something in "Mint" that I want I'll simply install it. But for users that don't want to have to bother I guess it'd be fine... Sean