Re: Mint 17 here
I have been surprised to find that on my dual-boot laptop, I use Mint to troubleshoot the hardware when Windows 8.1 won't play nicely with it. As yet the only thing that worked better under Windows is the SD card reader- everything else that has been problematic under Windows ( including external microphones and the wireless card ) work perfectly on Mint. Consequently it sees the vast majority of my usage on a daily basis, although when the alternative is Windows 8 being dragged face down through mud behind a donkey is a preferable option.