I fully understand that this is an EL list.  The laptop of a retired 
colleague failed.  On that laptop, I had installed SL pre 7 because the 
machine was not adequately provisioned for 64 bit operation.  A mutual 
friend donated to this colleague a Lenovo ThinkPad  R400 series (in much 
better physical condition than her failed laptop); he is a computer 
enthusiast enduser with no computer science or professional IT 
background.  The machine has Mint on it.  The colleague did not like the 
default Mint desktop -- I have installed Mate that is similar to what 
she is accustomed.  Is there anyone on this list who has to maintain or 
use a Mint environment? (I understand that Mint is a Debian/Ubuntu 
family Linux.)  If so, a private response would be most appreciated.

I have joined the Mint Forums (sic) but much of the discussion there 
seems more what I expect from enthusiasts/end-users, not professionals.  
At some time in the future, I may transition the machine to SL 7, but 
she cannot afford the downtime now and thus will continue with Mint.  
She needs particular versions of MS Office applications, and thus I have 
configured both CrossOver (commercial, supported, Wine) as well as 
VirtualBox -- however, she uses Linux Thunderbird (IMAP) for email and 
Linux Firefox as her default web browser,  not a MS environment or 
application.

Yasha Karant