Ubuntu is dominating the mindshare for desktop distros, but there’s still a place for rivals – even those built on the Ubuntu foundation – to take things in different directions. Mint attempts to create a more polished desktop with a focus on usability and elegance. The core version, like Ubuntu, is based on Gnome, but is accompanied by packages based on other environments – in this case, KDE. But the big question is, can a KDE flavoured Mint do better than Kubuntu? Read on to find out.

Part of the project’s ethos is to have all your hardware work out-of-the-box with no configuration. In most cases, that’s what happens. We had some installation issues, but a search of the web didn’t find anyone else having the same trouble, so we think this was an isolated problem.