I'm installing Linux Mint 12 on my laptop. The release notes contain a link to a tips and tricks page for figuring out the new desktop, which is necessary because it's rather non-obvious ... and which is down to reduce load on their servers on the occasion of the release.

The live DVD runs well and activates all the features of the Thinkpad T61, as I expected. I'll add notes through the day. Updates to follow.

Update: 119 MB of updates on the day of release, including a completely new Firefox. Fair enough for me, in the US with high-speed access, but I feel a little silly bothering to burn the DVD with that much to download after installation anyway. Thing is I doubt this is my final installation. I let it resize Windows and install on the inner ⅔ of the hard drive, but I don't think I really want to stay dual-boot.

1820 update: The resized Windows XP installation boots OK. With all the Lenovo software it's pretty big even with not much else installed. I have over 41 GiB used, admittedly with one game and a good essentials pack from Ninite installed. I only have a 160 GB drive. I don't think I want to give up all that space to Windows just to boot it up for an occaisional game.

2205 update: Writing this from FF8 on the laptop. Copied my .mozilla folder and let it upgrade me; it restored this editor tab along with the others. Need to check a Flash site ... check. Had to update Stylish myself for whatever reason, but it's working now.

I've crashed GNOME a couple times while playing with theme settings. Otherwise I'm happy with all the extensions Mint made. I have downloaded LXDE and XFCE and will give them a try too. Really, I'm not much into fine tuning my desktop these days. I did enough of that 15 years ago.

Also, I found my downloaded .debs in /var/cache/apt/archives; copied them to a flash drive for reinstallation assuming I reinstall everything.