I have finally been able to try out the Linux Mint 10 live CD and I am impressed with how fast it runs on my i3 system with 2GB of RAM, Firefox loads instantly after the first time loading it and it overall is way faster than Windows 7 by orders of magnitude,very impressive indeed. It uses the 2.6.35 kernel and Gnome version 2.32.0 which is more recent than OpenSuse 11.3 and Ubuntu 10.10, I do not like the desktop theme with light coloured window title bars but this is easily fixed by selecting another desktop theme. Mp3 playback works out of the box and it comes with mplayer v1.0rc4-4.4.5 , which is awesome for playing movies and is very light on resources as well. Unlike Ubuntu, the GIMP is included as well as the other usual suspects like Transmission for downloading and seeding torrents and the Firefox web browser, which is version 3.6.10. The aforementioned Mp3 playback is handled by Rhythmbox 0.13.1 as shown in the screen-shot above. When you click the sound icon in the system tray to adjust sound volume, it has a control embedded in it that allows you to see the name of the song that is playing and has rewind, pause and fast forward controls. What a nice touch. Here is a screenshot of the sound properties applet and the MP3 player integration into the sound volume control. Very useful indeed, you can pause the track and switch between tracks easily.
I can highly recommend this distribution to anyone who wants a fast and reliable desktop Linux distribution that is easy to use and includes many useful programs and utilities. Get downloading now, the version I have is 831 megabytes but well worth the download.