I have tried many, many Linux distros and, while I am generally a geek, I didn't find any of them to be particularly pleasant to use. Last one I tried was Ubuntu 10 and it was "OK" - they all seem to feel like the whole interface is a huge Java applet! For UI, I *much* prefer OS X to Linux and to certain extent - Windows. No experience with Mint, though, so I am generalising here.
That said, I would never replace Linux for server side of things (web, FTP, VPN...) - without the UI. Solid as a rock and exactly what Unix/Linux was designed for.