I've recently switched Linux Mint as a result of Canonical's new focus on eye candy rather than functionality (I couldn't take the new interface in Ubuntu). Have others gone the same way or is there another distribution I should look at?
I just keep separate partitions and do a full install on the ones I need. No sweat.
On the other hand, I did a "ubuntu" style upgrade to 10.04 LTS, and that worked fine, too (I run that on a netbook for their netbook interface). It took longer than a full install on Mint (perhaps being a slower machine had something to do with it), but it worked out ok.
Running 11.10, replaced unity with xmonad on laptop. Running kubuntu (kde 4.8 ppa) or xfce on desktop computer depending on the mood.
I still think that KDE is the best (and improving) desktop environment for Linux but for older machines xubuntu/xfce is probably a good substitute.
The reason I use [xk]ubuntu is that I like the debian package system but with the somewhat more up to date packages.
I still run some gentoo machines, some for many years, but the pain of compiling stops to be funny after a while so I run it only on servers now.
Unfortunately, in Mint 12 my lexmark printer no longer works. I think it's some issue between 3.0 kernel, cups, and Mint, but nobody has quite figured it out yet.
This happens with Windows upgrades too, so please no flame wars here.
Ubuntu is not limited to the default interface if you spend a little bit of time; probably that is far less time than getting to know a new distribution.
But maybe i have overlooked other distributions that "just work" out of the box.