I was jumping around from distro to distro for awhile just trying to see which would fulfill my needs. I waited and tried Mint the mate version and it was ok. I did try ubuntu mate 16.04 before, but now with the point release and learning more linux along the way I have settled on ubuntu mate.
With my experience I have been using linux for about 2 years but fully converted over for a year and distro hopping definitely helped me learn how to handle certain issues and different package management systems, it was very beneficial.
