I suppose one of the joys of GNU/Linux is the sheer volume of choice.

I suppose one of the biggest problems of GNU/Linux is the sheer volume of choice.

A lot to be said for sticking with what you like on the workaday computer, perhaps, and experimenting with others on spare/virtual machines.

My own preference is for long-term support versions for the main computer - I'm still very happy with Mint - although rolling release distros would keep things cutting-edge. Tricky.

Have you had a look at CentOS lately, g-c? I haven't, but Igor at Dedoimedo seems impressed. I was also taken with Mageia 1, and keep meaning to replace its partition with Mageia 2.

What I've seen of Gnome 3 really hasn't floated my boat so far. I'm biased by the inability of most of my antiques to run it, of course, but where it does work, it always seems to take one or two more clicks to find anything.

Unity's undeniably pretty, but I found it a little underwhelming (although it did actually work on an Eee PC.)

Xubuntu is my current favourite for low-powered stuff. Peformance won't be a consideration for you, but the sheer speed of XFCE is attractive. I also find it easy to use, even if it is a little old-fashioned looking and would probably be quite out of place on a modern dumb smart telephone. Mint XFCE is also working quite nicely on VBox - unlike an earlier version which I rather messed up.

If your preferred distro supports Cinnamon or MATE, I personally could heartily support giving those a try. As pretty as Unity, but a *****y sight less irritating - downright pleasant to use, in fact.

Again, Igor Ljubuncic's views might be of interest (if somewhat Mint-centric in these particular articles) - along with his review of CentOS, if you think you might like to consider that distro, too:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-mint-maya-mate.html

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-mint-cinnamon.html

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/centos-6.html