In what way is Cinnamon slow? It does have those stupid effects, which Microsoft seems to begun removing in Windows 8 and I think people are confused by the delay time which is part of those effects. There's also the GPU driver factor.

And a good distro that allow me to select the drive in that I like to install the GRUB?
Last time that I'm tried several distros (about one year ago) only two allow me to select the disk (and I not remember which were) , the others install it in HDA0 wihout asking; and yes,I selected first the HDA1 as primary boot drive, but as I remember, this only work with one distro, rewriting the others the Windows MBR in HDA0.

I really didn't like it. Cinnamon was alright, but KDE has all sorts of weird problems and "features". Back to Win7.
Not a bad choice, but eh.

What weird problems do you have with KDE, the beloved desktop environment of many?

Multimedia keys unable to see other programs, volume and mute not affecting the main volume, the superkey not launching the programs list, not having a functional console, three clicks to shutdown, hardware monitoring widgets barely useful.

Did I fix a bunch of stuff? Yeah. Could I be bothered about the rest...

I was turned off Ubuntu a few years ago when they started making changes because change, but now it's becoming ridiculous. Mint Cinnamon was decent.


Oh, by the way, I'm a noob and it's all user error. I should stick to systems that do everything for you.

The big upgrade I'm looking for is integrated Wayland support as standard. The next Fedora is hopefully going to include it. There is experimental support now and the Fedora forum is usually quite good for guides, automated install scripts and help if you want to give it a try.

Multimedia keys as in? Other programs as in?

Volume and mute work fine on my laptop.

As for not launching a program list, why not use ALT+F2 or switch to Search and Launch? Also, the superkey opening the programs list is something that only Windows does. They probably have a patent on it, but you could possibly configure a shortcut. The problem being that superkey defaults to being META.

I found that its two clicks to shutdown as one click to open the launcher, hover over to the fourth option, up, click and 30 seconds later, your machine starts to wind down.

As for a not functioning console, I'm confused. KDE by default comes installed with Konsole and its far more featured than Xtem or LXterm in that it actually offers a menu bar by default.

...On the other hand, I threw out Mint because I found it too simplistic and controlling (And I borked a kernel upgrade), as I prefer to be able to peer under the hood. What kind of system monitoring were you looking for that the plasma widgets couldn't handle?

By the way, I'm avoiding Ubuntu too, as rather, being the madman I am, have been using KDE Fedora 20.

I will not turn this into a discussion, because I don't care any more. But...

Multimedia keys are the music player buttons.
I'm not using your laptop.
Because I've always used the superkey and it works in Cinnamon.
Why would I want to wait 30 seconds? I'm leaving now.
The Konsole just wouldn't show up. Eternal blackness.
I like to have the core temps and GPU temp in the taskbar.

Maybe I'll check out Fedora, months from today.

Stock or something like PC-BSD?

I think they're all less bloated than vanilla Mint, but PC-BSD is set up pretty nicely for home users if I remember correctly.
I've been out of 'the game' for a while, I'll probably only get back into it when I buy a new computer.

Crunchbang Linux because it's lighter, faster, and more customizable. It also requires more effort and nothing is done for you, but I'm cool with that since it means I'm in total control.

That depends on what you understand under "better". I personally prefer Debian proper (testing branch with KDE).

You could also try Linux Lite a newer beginner distribution that has been made for people migrating from windows to linux. Also just a bit of warning it has a Steam client already installed if that is important for you.

Home website of Linux Lite: https://www.linuxliteos.com/index.html

You can also check more features of this distro on this nice Linux distro review site: http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com/2014/06/linux-lite-20-beryl-review-evolving-to.html

Honestly?

Its seems to me that Linux Mint is the best of whats out there.

I am using it on a Sony Vaio laptop, it has 6gb ram and 512 video card, but a really shitty CPU - 1.6ghz dual core, so I installed the XFCE version (Linux Mint 17 Qiana XFCE 64bit).

Its low on resources, looks good, is extremely polished, features a great updater, and contains the whole package or all the software needed.

Mozilla Firefox, Flash, Transmission (torrent client), Libre Office, VLC, Banshee (great music player, my favourite), Synaptic Package Manager (GREAT for installing and uninstalling software, you simply type in the names, tick them - it sorts out all the dependencies etc by itself; its so much more convenient than on windows, no more googling for installers, it downloads and installs everything for you; awesomeness :).

If you're into DJ mixing, I can also recommend a great free program Mixxx. Really great stuff, there's no need to pay for Tractor ;]
The only other distribution that I could wholeheartedly recommend is Xubuntu (Ubuntu XFCE).
You have all the benefits of Ubuntu, minus the awful (really resource - heavy) Unity.

XFCE all the way.

Or you could try elementary os - looks good, is super comfortable to use, it be best to wait for the new version to come out.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/08/elementary-os-freya-beta-download
They've 'officially released' the beta, so the full version should be out sooner than later ;]