This 100%.
I started out with Madriva after being a lifelong MS user. It was a steep learning curve. I had to learn how to compile and install stuff from source. While not a bad thing to learn, for a Windows user, it was totally foreign to me.
After several years enjoying Mandriva I switched over to Mint and thought, "Good lord, where have you been my whole life!?" It was like night and day. I actually got a lot more comfortable using terminal with Mint then I ever was with Mandriva. I also switched over to Gnome from KDE and think its much better than KDE.