Have you found a favourite distro? I started using Ubuntu a couple of years ago on my home laptop, but when that new design came out with that horrible big side bar, I kind of gave up on it.

I also ended up buying a new laptop that came with Windows 7 so the Ubuntu one sits in the attic rotting. Still, I'm still tempted to move back to a good GUI based Linux distro if I can find one. I just haven't got the time these days to start installing different ones and testing then out.

I use Xubuntu on Work PC, Home PC, Media PC and Laptop.

I love XFCE, It's fast, stable, easily configured, uses normal GTK stuff so fits with the Gnome apps, is a regular plain old desktop (main menu, window buttons/taskbar).

Mostly the thing I like about XFCE is I don't have to think about it, it just does it's thing, stays out of my way and doesn't break a user interface covenant I'm used to all the way back to Win95.

Of course you can run XFCE on pretty much any distro but the Xubuntu folks do an excellent job of packaging it all up and having access to Ubuntu's PPA's is a big win since pretty much everything is packaged for it.

Exactly. I'm not a fan of any of the "popular" desktop environments. I liked Gnome 2 and didn't mind using it (RHEL desktops) but for several years XFCE has been my favorite. It has all the features I need but isn't too intrusive and stays out of my way. I'm not really a big Ubuntu fan either but I can't complain too much about Xubuntu.

It's also the only one I've tried that allows me a taskbar per screen with only window entries from that screen, something I've done since Gnome 2, You can sorta do it with plugins with Gnome but they break all the time, KDE can do it in theory but KDE is awful (I'd like to like but never have).

So far as someone fairly new to linux, I'm liking Linux Mint Cinnamon. My second choice would be Elementary https://elementary.io/ but it was running a little slow on my laptop.