People doing the 30 days linux Challenge are having several problems because of Mint's old packages and technology. Why people still recommend it when there is Fedora and Opensuse with KDE and Gnome?
The kernel is too old for newer AMD gpu drivers to work, but switching to a newer kernel isn't too hard. I had to when I built a new computer last winter, but I have also used various *nixes for a good long time.
Knowing how to discover you need a newer kernel is a bit tough for recent convert, though.
I wouldn't call switching kernels that hard. It takes a few clicks and a reboot to do. However, they kicker is that you need to know to do that. You don't know what you don't know.
Exactly. As far as Linux has come in terms of ease of desktop use and hardware compatibility, there is still a barrier in knowing how to know which flavor is right for you and, almost more importantly, why that flavor is right.