This is a screenshot of the laptop, after a clean install of Linux Mint Debian. I’ve always found Debian easier to maintain than an rpm based system, and since Ubuntu and Fedora have moved away from the mainstream into gnome 3 and unity, I find myself using XFCE by choice. And LMDE is rolling, so no need to burn a CD or DVD every six months…
Mint distros have fairly pragmatic choices. Flash and Youtube work out the box, it comes with the most useful office system (Libreoffice) and, as it is based on the debian testing repository, it is fairly easy to keep running at the uni.
And… you can install it onto odd machines, such as some of the homebrew crazy boxes me and the boys use. Recommended.
UPDATE.
I’ve got fairly stable versions of Fedora 15 running on my desktop (as a work machine, I need it to be stable).
If you are familiar with Fedora, you can see that I have gone for a green theme, and I use two screens. What is interesting is that both distros are about equally uptodate, and they are both using xfce: apart from the wallpapers all the other settings are stock, and they look quite different.
I usually dual boot Ubuntu and Windows [I online game and prefer to run Windows instead of emulating with Wine]
I’ve noticed a lot of people have moved away from Ubuntu. There’s been a few bugs [nothing catastrophic, but annoying] & the Linux community tends to be unforgiving when it comes to distribution flaws.
My Servers still run Fedora: I have gnome and xfce installed on them, and they are not broken (and production machines) so I am leaving them alone at present. The next version of Fedora makes considerable changes and I am going to wait a little before upgrading the machines I need to work.
Sons run windows 7 on laptop for gaming and dual boot or use desktops running linux for work. Windows, in my mind, is now a gaming OS.