Re: Strangely enough ...
" have indeed used Linux. Mint is nearly there but the graphical style and feel is a little bit lacking."
did you try the Mate desktop?
"Ubuntu is horrible as are plain Gnome and KDE"
Ubuntu/Unity you mean? yes, it's like Windows APE meets MeeGo. KDE is an acquired taste, I must admit. And gnome 3 is *REALLY* sucky, which is why _I_ use Mate.
You needed to give Linux a better chance. Try going in with the knowledge that the default desktop for the distro is probably NOT the one YOU want. And Mate seems to have most of that ironed out, in my opinion. It was forked from Gnome 2 by developers who *DISLIKED* the direction things were going a few years back, which ended up giving us Unity, Windows "Ape", Win-10-nic, and (the real offender) Gnome 3. I'm in agreement with them. Had they not done it, I would have probably done it myself. (Linus became very angry about gnome 3 and went with a more lightweight version, LXDE I think, and you can install that one, too).
most of these desktop options will be available to you as a package, and then the startup/login screen should let you pick from the window managers you've installed [if it's using something like gdm anyway].
Biting the hand that feeds IT
