Mint 13's now running happily on the less ancient desktop.

Just to be on the safe side, I backed up all my data first, and used to Remastersys to create a reinstallation DVD if I decide to go back to Mint 9 - up to date until today, and includes all the programs I've added.

No  major installation problems with Mint 13, although it does help to remember to mark the /home partition for use during partitioning - just remembering not to let the installer format it. (That's assuming one's upgrading from an older distro - in my case, Mint 9.)

It still only sees 3.4 GB of RAM out of the 4 available, which is a bit of a mystery. I suppose I need to find out what motherboard the computer has and what it actually supports.

Otherwise, 64-bit Mint 13 installed happily, and the old /home partition/directory remains, as far as I can see, fully accessible.

One nice surprise was the fact that all Firefox's settings, bookmarks and add-ons were preserved. I assume these usually lurk in the home directory.

A surprisingly major irritation is that a number of applications I was used to in Mint 9 are either missing or not so good. A little googling has resolved most of the bothers, but I'm really irritated at the loss of the old, simple screenshot. In Mint 9, one simply pressed Prt Scr. Now, a separate screenshot app needs to be launched each time. If anyone knows how to get back to the old way, do let me know.

I suppose things will gradually come right, but so far, it just doesn't feel as polished or complete to me as Mint 9 does.

At least the "Windows" key on the keyboard now has a use. It opens Cinnamon's menu.

Right-clicking on any program icon offers the options to show it on the panel or on the desktop. For the moment, I'm trying to keep things tidy by avoiding desktop icons, but have already started cluttering the panel up.

I'll try to add a screenshot - unfortunately, the panel icons will be rather on the tiny side. And the screenshot tool won't let me grab the menu.