Honestly - I love Mint [well Mint 10 / 11]. Installed it under VMWare as I am forced to use Windows desktop in corporate world but need open source development tools.
The mint menu is a real deal maker compared to the normal gnome desktop. Sadly however I must state that Mint 12 is a bit of a disaster (especially under VMWare workstation 7 and 8). Due to lack of hardware acceleration you get only the fallback gnome desktop. If I wanted that I could use Ubuntu LTS or similar. Selecting MATE from the user login screen provided me a seriously buggy (resize the screen and you menus are just gone and don't want to return) and _very_ poor font experience. Refer to the Mint forums for more info, however I must concur with one of the comments on the forum. Mint has made a the best effort they could considering the gnome 3 situation. However Mint 12 is _not_ ready for prime time, it's to buggy. Please lets consider it a alpha release and move on with Mint 13. And for first time Linux users, if you want to experience what Linux can really be please stick to Mint 11 for now as it is seriously good. If you try Mint 12 you may very well be disappointed. The Gnome 3 process has to be sorted especially if one does not (like me) like the Unity way of things.

that's very good profome

I tell you today that why windows OS (in my point of view) is not a open source OS. Because if Redmond Company made it a open source OS, then another OS will evolve from its source code. Like Linux Mint is evolved from Ubuntu. And many distro created by this way. So there exists 1000 distro as a result of these. See yourself Mint,Ubuntu remix and many other distro are based on Ubuntu. So nobody uses Ubuntu, but they use Linux mint, Ubuntu remix or other derivatives of Ubuntu. If windows became open source then a derivatives will be created and then many OS will be created which is based on windows. That is the reason why Linux has less user than windows. I run Ubuntu and not prefer alternatives like mint, which is just another Ubuntu.

This is the final version. The developers usually make the distribution available before the official date, if you know were to look.

Warning. This seems to be the final version of Linux Mint 12, but it isn't.
It is the release candidate or some development build.

I recommend that you wait a moment till the final version of Mint 12 is out on www.linuxmint.com which should be today or tomorrow.

Linux Mint 12
The best Linux version I've ever used. Its a beautiful program.
The mix of gnome 3 with gnome 2 is an excelent idea, for work all is easy and is very stable and intuitive.

I love it.
It is all one needs and smooth.
MGSE and Mate (the first time) are fab.
They will mature.

I use Mint for years now and it is great for day to day work.

Crap Mint. Has created BIOS problem. I am back to my windows 2000.

Linux is not my main OS but on my desktop which gets less use these days. I was using Ubuntu on it, and loved it, until I started to have trouble installing updates at version 10. Then took ages of fiddling to get version 11 installed as it had even more issues. Unity was just too goofy for me, so I started to look around for a new linux distro, and found Mint. Installed first time with no issues (hooray!) and I found it much more intuitive in its UI. Now as much as I would like to love Ubuntu, I prefer Mint. Intuitive, easy to use, just plain works and stable. My single complaint is that it boots up on a blank screen so Im not always sure its booting, but its not much of a complaint.

Beautiful program. Thanks to developers.

This will have to be the best Linux distro there is. It installed without any fuss, it works (all of it !!!), it looks clean and it is a pleasure to use !! I didn't even have to look at the printer - it was automatically installed as well as the scanner !! Only "MoonOS" comes close to it..on second place !! Thanks to the developers - keep it up please !

I took the plunge and did a duel boot with Ubuntu and Windows Vista
Then tried Linux Mint 10 duel boot with Windows Vista.
Did a clean install and only use Linux Mint 10, I like the way it just works and got rid of Windows Vista.
That's why I tried Linux, because Windows Vista was a such a pain to use.
Must point out though there is absolutely nothing wrong with Ubuntu except it has a higher learning curve than Linux Mint.
And stuck with Linux 10 because the wife likes and gets on with it and she is NOT tech minded.
But then if I can get Ubuntu up and going anyone can do it.
So thanks to Mint/Ubuntu I am one happy Penguin.

It\\\'s free, it works, it looks nice. I do not have to bee a braniac to use it. What else can a user aspect of OS?

I do not have to bee a braniac, it works, it looks nice, it's free. What else can we want of en OS?!

The best Linux version out there! I've been using various distros for years and this is the best.

The best Linux version I've ever used. It just don't get any better than this! This is my main OS and I use it for everything.

I normally stay away from rc1"s, but I liked Mints release well enough to use it full time.