I have been using Linux since about 1995. Originally used Mandrake, installed on Office computer, dual booting with Windows. When I retired and bought my own machine, I purchased my own Dell machine I initially used Windows XP, but after making a mess of my installation, I decided to go  back to Linux. Stated with Mint 10 and gradually  upgraded., until I had made such a mess of my installation that I had to start all over again. Tried various KDE based distros, Kubuntu, Mageia, and Open Suse, but found that they all kept locking up my machine, so I've gon back to Mint 13 Cinnamon 1.6. So far again very stable.