You mean like we’ve suddenly achieved lower denial rates or single-payer healthcare? Nothing so grand, but people are talking and both sides of the political spectrum have found a semblance of unity over this—which is probably the biggest thing they don’t want to see, is people taking their eyes off the culture war and noticing the class war.
I’m enjoying Mint, and I think it’s just about ready to install for my folks and kids. I do still encounter hard lock conditions every once in a while, and sometimes those necessitate some shell fuckery to repair the system after a hard boot. I’ve managed to recover every time, but I don’t want to support a half-dozen people because they sure wouldn’t be able to manage on their own.
Best thing I did was separate my /home partition from /. I’ve reinstalled or switched OSes a few times and never lost anything important.
I haven’t experimented with that many different distros. Everyone seems to have a favorite, but honestly if it’s stable, simple, and runs my software that’s all I need. Mint is that for me right now.