I'm not a big fan of mainline Mint either (too conservative). Since that post I've found out the issue is that nonfree drivers are required for either of my GPUs to work, and of course the (Mint) Debian installers don't let you throw those in during installation. I'd prefer to be running a Sid-based install, but you can't do that without starting with Debian Testing, which doesn't include nonfree drivers, and I can't reliably get a net connection to any liveCD (they choke on my wifi card and I can only sometimes run a LAN cable, which I have to then yank back up even though there's all of a foot of visible cable not under a rug or in my room).

I got my main Mint installation working again, sort of. A lot of options got fucked up, and fixing them all is about as much work as starting from scratch. Only I don't know what I could start from scratch with.