Linux Mint Cinnaon/MATE/Xfce/KDE

[WashclothRepairman]

What exactly is the difference between these?

I just built a Win10 gaming system after having hardware failure and wanted to save some data from my old drive, and while Win10 is detecting the drive, it can't actually access any of the files on it, and someone suggested Linux might be able to "see' the files that win10 can't.

Here is the original thread with more information on that: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3435784/secondary-drive-win.html#19793052

After doing a little research, I believe Mint is probably the best match for me, but there are four different Mints at the download site and I'm unclear how they are different.

This is primarily a gaming rig and otherwise only used for simple tasks like LibreOffice and youtube, I don't do any kind of content creation, and I like a Windows xp/7 type UI and dislike things that try, on their own, to make my life easier or be flashy and fancy for the sake of being flashy and fancy. I really dislike the Win8 and mac UIs, so suggestions on which Mint to use (or a different one entirely) would be appreciated.

 

[Scottray]

These are just the different desktops/user interface. For your use, I'd recommend cinnamon - it's similar to Windows. Download it to a USB thumb drive. Then, boot your PC from the USB drive. Mint will give you a screen to run it as a trial from the USB drive (or install it). It will run a little slow from the USB drive. However, you'll be able to see if you can access the files you want from your old drive.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

Fantastic, I'll do that, thanks.