I could be wrong of course, or my memory could be faulty (both highly plausible) but I wasn't happy enough with LMDE to persevere and investigate and I switched to the 'buntu based XFCE mint, then back to Xubuntu Like James did a while ago, I am going through a "distro hopping" phase at the moment.
Cheers
Mick
Distro hopping isn't a bad idea.... just that everytime I have done it I find I have gone round in a circle! But that is confirmation that it still suits. Mint doesn't have to staff to keep up with maintenance. *buntu family seems to constantly extending the family - maybe you'd like ubuntu-gnome. Glad my distro hop was of interest. Looking at the *buntu family I think the last year has seen Xubuntu get better and better - 13.04 was very much better than 12.04 which I think was one of their worst (and that's LTS).
I was surprised to see the talk on the Shuttleworth blog of considering a rolling release - he mentioned he was finding the names hard to keep producing. Be a good idea to drop them altogether! The numbering of each release I think is good whereas just a version number like F18 you don't know when it was released unless you look it up (mind you you would definitely want to forget that one - came out two months late and was so bad it was unusable). You mentioned trying Arch, which I found very dodgy to set up - Aptosid was well put together but my issue with rolling release is stability. To me point release is the way to go.
For Xubuntu 13.10 they are incorporating a core meta package. For *buntu I can't see why they don't just have one install iso to which you add your DM and own choice of apps. They could then concentrate on development and in depth testing and produce a really good annual version. When one looks at each release *buntu seems to alternate from good and then not so good - April being better than October's release. 13.04 I think is one of their best releases and yet still low down the distrowatch list at #27 (i think). Mageia #2 (I found it ugh) and poor Ubuntu at #3. I think Unity was the right step forward (aka phone look) but user's weren't ready for it.
james