I just went Mint with my home desktop and HTPC. Works well for both! Been using it since January, and will continue to do so.
Pros:
- Most Steam games work great via PlayOnLinux! This was a very nice surprise.
- All HTPC functions work really, really well (filesharing, video + music playback, emulators for old console games). XBMC is amazing.
- Sweet, sweet terminal. Oh, how I have missed you.
- Programming is way easier, especially for Python and C++.
- Lots of historically rough spots (e.g. sound playback) have been recently overhauled and work much better than they used to.
- The Software Manager is awesome. You type in what you want, and it gives it to you. Fast, intuitive, no hassle.
Cons:
- Learning curve will be harder than Win8 if you're coming from a Windows background like me. The options and settings are all very accessible and well laid out, but learning where to look for them takes a while. I Googled "how to change my wallpaper in Linux Mint" for several minutes last night, to find out the answer was "right click on the desktop". Setting up VPN access to work was a similar adventure (answer: "click on the network connection icon.") I kept expecting things to be harder than they actually were.
- Some games are just not meant to be, and won't work on Linux. Guild Wars 2 was more trouble than it was worth.
- GIMP is a pretty bad image editor.
Overall, I love Mint, and I'm sticking with it.