The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use.

Started in 2006, Linux Mint is now the 4th most widely used home operating system behind Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS and Canonical's Ubuntu.

Some of the reasons for the success of Linux Mint are:
It works out of the box, with full multimedia support and is extremely easy to use.
It's both free of cost and open source.
It's community-driven. Users are encouraged to send feedback to the project so that their ideas can be used to improve Linux Mint.
Based on Debian and Ubuntu, it provides about 30,000 packages and one of the best software managers.
It's safe and reliable. Thanks to a conservative approach to software updates, a unique Update Manager and the robustness of its Linux architecture, Linux Mint requires very little maintenance (no regressions, no antivirus, no anti-spyware...etc).

http://linuxmint.com/