I see a lot of people asking for alternatives. I spent 12 months trying almost every distro I could get my hands on and have some recommendations for those interested.<p>This was my shortlist at the end of all my adventurism and testing.<p>1. Linux Mint<p>2. Ubuntu MATE<p>3. Antergos Cinnamon<p>Pretty short list but those are what I found I settled on as possible choices for my own use. If the goal is getting down to business and getting work done rather than fiddling with the system I think those 3 would fit most people&#x27;s needs. I was a longtime Xubuntu user prior to this adventurism, and IMO there are just better alternatives though it would probably be #4  if I had one, but I&#x27;m just not a fan any longer. MATE man handles XFCE.<p>I leave Mint at the top because other than these security concerns, it remains the best distro for me. I love their LTS update policy, continually delivering updates to Mint during the entire support span of Ubuntu LTS. Their desktop env is also just better IMO than alternatives.<p>Ubuntu MATE is pretty good and for the type of person like myself who is drawn to Mint, would be a really good alternative. It&#x27;s missing a few features of Cinnamon, which is superior in general for me to MATE. But overall this is what I&#x27;ll install if I decided to ditch Mint.<p>Antergos is just Arch with a nice installer. I didn&#x27;t spend a long time testing this but it would be my choice for a rolling distro. Many people I know want that and they offer Cinnamon as a main, supported environment. Might be the best of every world for some. I prefer the slower updates of LM and UM, and install newer packages through PPAs or compiling it.<p>As an aside, I have completely given up installing other desktop environments onto distros that didn&#x27;t originally ship with them. I see people recommending that, and it may work out but it&#x27;s a mess if you want to switch back in my experience. I prefer to pick a distro that ships with the DE of your choice. I would not run for example, &#x27;sudo apt-get install cinnamon-desktop-environment&#x27;, anywhere at any point. :)<p>Hopefully this helps someone out there looking to migrate off of Mint. I&#x27;m still using it (on 17.2 here) but may move to UbuntuMATE or Antergos Cinnamon, depending on Clem&#x27;s response.