I'm enjoying Mint, and I think it's just about ready to install for my folks and kids. I do still encounter hard lock conditions every once in a while, and sometimes those necessitate some shell fuckery to repair the system after a hard boot. I've managed to recover every time, but I don't want to support a half-dozen people because they sure wouldn't be able to manage on their own.

Best thing I did was separate my /home partition from /. I've reinstalled or switched OSes a few times and never lost anything important.

I haven't experimented with that many different distros. Everyone seems to have a favorite, but honestly if it's stable, simple, and runs my software that's all I need. Mint is that for me right now.