I'm not sure why Linux Mint's software downloader tool was innovative and useful to me, while I find the Microsoft Store an annoying addition to Windows. Maybe it's a "grass is greener" mentality?

For those times when you absolutely must still run Windows XP, one safer way of doing it is to run XP in a virtual machine using the Oracle VirtualBox hypervisor on Linux Mint.

Yes, many of your Windows programs aren't available on Linux, but some of them are and there are Linux programs that can do just as well as your old XP software.

Following the release of Ubuntu 12.10, Linux Mint 14 Nadia is now available to download. It brings several under-the-hood tweaks, a new software manager, and an overhauled Cinnamon 1.6 desktop ...

Sure, you can make Linux look a lot like Windows but the second someone opens the file manager or system prefs, etc, they will be hit with any entirely different look and function.